
Class 
Book 



-JJ&OJ 



5*3 



Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



WHAT'S THE MATTER 



WITH THE 



UNITED STATES? 



A BOOK OF STARTLING FACTS FOR 
ALL VOTERS 



BY 

C M; STEVANS 
Author of ' " Commerce is King" '''•Labor is King" Etc. 



"Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible 
refuge of wealth from the power of thejpeople." 

— Abraham Lincoln, 
Message to Congress, 1861. 



CHICAGO 
C. M. STEVANS & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



36064 



Library of Congr« sc 

Two Copies Received 
AUG 18 1900 

Copyright entry . 



td 



SECOND COPY. 

Delivered to 

ORDER DIVISION, 

LSEP 5 1900 






Copyright 1900 
By 
C. M. STEVANS. 



74182 



WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH 
THE UNITED STATES? 



LIBERTY AND SMALL STATES. 

Sir Archibald Alison of Glasgow, Scotland, an 
eminent jurist, said in the early part of the Nine- 
teenth Century: 

"The history of mankind, from its earliest period 
to the present moment, is fraught with proofs of the 
one general truth, that it is in small states, and in 
consequence of the emulation and ardent spirit 
which they develop, that the human mind arrives at 
its greatest perfection, and that the freest scope is 
afforded both to the grandeur of moral, and the 
brilliancy of intellectual character. It is to the citi- 
zens of small republics that we are indebted botxi 
for the greatest discoveries which have improved 
the condition or elevated the character of mankind, 
and for the noblest examples of private and public 
virtue with which the page of history is adorned. 

"It was in the republics of ancient Greece, and 
in consequence of the emulation which was excited 
among her rival cities, that the beautiful arts of 
poetry, sculpture, and architecture were first 
brought to perfection; and while the genius of the 
human race was slumbering among the innumer- 
able multitudes of the Persian and Indian monarch- 
ies, the single city of Athens produced a succession 
of great men, whose works have improved^and de- 
lighted the world in every succeeding age.' 

Justin McCarthy, the English historian, said in 



6 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

1900: "One of the great developments of modern 
political life is the recognition of the doctrine of 
nationalities, the doctrine which teaches that every 
nationality is happiest and best ordered according 
as it is allowed the freedom to develop its own high- 
est gifts and capacities, material, intellectual and 
moral, in its own way." 

The greed of wealth is a seductive and treach- 
erous aspect of unrighteousness, asserting the false- 
hood that a man's life consists in the multitude of 
the things that he possesses. It is the great hard- 
ener of hearts. It knows neither justice nor mercy. 
It befouls charity with insincerity and ostentation. 
It poisons the ingenuousness of youth, pollutes the 
wisdom of life, makes age unvenerable and death a 
degradation. Yet the conviction can hardly be 
avoided that this insane greed has become the con- 
trolling passion in the lives of a large and influential 
body of our people. It sways every aspiration and 
rules every activity with a presuming and audacious 
authority never before so plainly manifest. 

In the senate, the college and the church, as well 
as in the market, the shop and the parlor, it makes 
its baleful spirit evident. The worst of the matter 
is that there seems to be a steady increase of cring- 
ing submission to its assumption and its demands, 
less independence of its behests, less confidence in 
the superiority of other motives and other satisfac- 
tions, less contentment with modest compensations 
of industry, less cheerfulness in conscious rectitude 
in an humble lot, in sobriety, in frugality, in sacri- 
fice, in domestic simplicity, in social helpfulness. 

Bird S. Coler, Comptroller of the city of New 
York, says: 

"The spirit of corrupt commercialism has invaded 
politics and public life in this country, and in some 



WITH THE UNITED STATES?. 7 

of the larger cities the invasion has for a time over- 
run the Government. By the spirit of commercial- 
ism in this connection I mean that public feeling, 
far too prevalent in this country, that politics is a 
business and those engaged in it are entitled to 
make money out of it. If a public officer has been 
trained in such an atmosphere he will barter a pub- 
lic franchise for personal or party gain, sell a con- 
tract for a commission, and, keeping his own hands 
out of the public treasury, will say in all sincerity: 
'I am an honest man.' 

"Create in any state or municipality the impres- 
sion that a political pull will pass a bill or pave the 
way for the payment of an unjust claim, and the 
seeds of political dishonesty have been planted deep 
in fruitful soil, where they will sooner or later 
spring forth a harvest of corruption. Already the 
impression is widespread that the rules of honesty 
deemed necessary in private business life need not 
apply to the public service. Too many politicians 
hold that it is legitimate fruit of partisan victory to 
make money, out of the public treasury 

"A few months ago I asked an officer of one of 
the largest financial corporations in New York to 
assist me in a certain public matter. He apolo- 
gized for his refusal with the explanation: T know 
you are right, but I must protect the interests of* 
my company, and cannot afford to antagonize cer-' 
tain political interests. If I did we should be an- 
noyed and oppressed in a variety of ways/ 

POLITICAL POWER AS A LEVER 

"Honest and legitimate political power never yet 
attempted to intimidate capital or oppress private 
business. Whenever such methods can be adopted 
with impunity the poison of corruption in politics 



8 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

has begun to spread throughout the community, 
public spirit has been weakened and business honor 
is imperiled. 

'The old system of stealing from the public treas- 
ury has passed away, and the safer and more profit- 
able plan of bartering political influence for cash, or 
stock in corporations, has succeeded." 

THE DANGER FROM LAWLESS WEALTH. 

Self-preservation is the first law of society, as 
well as the first law of physical existence. A mon- 
opoly tends toward industrial aristocracy; it tends 
to create a condition wherein a few will control all 
the means of production and transmit that control 
from generation to generation, while the masses 
struggle for a bare living, with no hope of progress 
or independence. 

The influence of concentrated wealth is so great 
in the social and political world that a government 
of the people, by the people and for the people 
cannot long survive if industrial independence dis- 
appears. When the monopoly idea is carried to 
its natural and logical conclusion we will have a 
government of the trusts, by the trusts and for the 
trusts, with the large majority of the people more 
helpless than they are under an absolute monarchy. 

There is no hostility to capital in this country. On 
the contrary, everybody is desirous of accumulating 
that valuable thing called capital, but there is hos- 
tility to some of the methods employed by those 
who possess large capital to overreach those who 
possess less capital. There is some hostility — 
though not as much as there should be — toward 
those who use large accumulations of capital to 
corrupt government and purchase special privi- 
leges, and then use the power acquired to destroy 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 9 

competition and trample upon the rights of weaker 
members of society. There is. some hostility to- 
ward those who, in the acquiring of capital, have 
not furnished to society an adequate return for the 
capital acquired. 

If society is in danger the danger does not come 
from those "who are without means and who wish 
to have it without w r ork," but those who have means 
for which they did not work. 

Bismarck in addressing an audience of farmers a 
few years ago told them that they would have to act 
together in order to protect themselves "from the 
drones of society, who produce nothing but laws." 
If we could to-day divide the people of the United 
States into two classes, placing in one group the 
producers of wealth and in another the non-pro- 
ducers, it would be found that the non-producing 
produced far more laws than the producers. So 
long as the non-producing element controls legisla- 
tion the laws will be more favorable to those who 
speculate than to those who toil. — William J. Bryan 
in the New York Journal, July 2, 1899. 

THE LABOR UNION. 

From a Republican editor we have received a 
characteristic Republican inquiry. It is this: 

"As a partisan of the party in power, I would like 
to know what you mean by 'offensive trusts' or 'op- 
pressive trusts,' and why you are constantly hound- 
ing them and saying nothing about the labor union 
trust. Is not the labor trust as oppressive as any 
other trust? 

"Were not the Democratic Congressmen coward- 
ly in offering an amendment to the Republican 
anti-trust resolution exempting labor unions from 
its provisions?" 



10 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

The Democratic Congressmen were not coward- 
ly, Mr. Republican Editor, and we will tell you why. 
On the plains it sometimes happens that a troop of 
ravenous wolves surround a herd of buffalo, among 
which are many calves. The herd bunches closely 
together for protection, with horns to the foe. 

Here we have two trusts — offensive and defen- 
sive. One is an offensive combination of greed, 
the other is a defensive combination of distress. Is 
it not right to thin out the wolves with "a" legislative 
shotgun, and let the buffalo go in peace? 

There is a vast difference in the money-power of 
ten men with a million dollars each, and a million 
men with ten dollars each. Ten millionaires band 
together to kill competition, corner products, re- 
duce wages and restrict supply. A million men 
oppressed by the ten organize for the maintenance 
of the right of every laboring man to a fair share of 
the wealth he creates. This is the so-called Labor 
Trust which Republican newspapers call an "of- 
fensive" combination. 

The Labor Trust does not — nay, cannot — pur- 
chase Congressmen, dictate to courts, command 
nominations to public offices or plunder producers. 
Labor's time is thoroughly occupied in self-defense. 

Labor gets even its national currency only after 
the Government has placed it in the hands of that 
legalized infamy the Banking Trust for distribu- 
tion — a trust which can expand or contract it at 
will. 

We have given here a few of the differences be- 
tween the offensive trust of capital and the defen- 
sive trust of labor. They are as far apart in prin- 
ciple and in practice as night and day. 

There is no harm in any trust that has nothing 
more than muscle and mechanical skill for its 
foundation. Such trusts should not be confounded 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? II 

with the criminal trusts. Neither should they be 
legislated against. — New York Journal. 

AN EXAMPLE IN THE TRUST SWINDLES. 

The Barbed Wire Trust raised the price of 
barbed wire nearly 200 per cent, and declared a 
dividend of 30 per cent. Not a farmer had any 
stock in the trust, but every farmer got caught on 
the barbs in the price when the price went up. 

The American Steel and Wire Company, that 
controls the output of more than 90 per cent, of the 
barbed wire and wire nails, has just given an object- 
lesson — a free exhibition of what the trusts mean. 
It first raised the price of barbed wire to a point 
where it could earn 30 per cent, on the capital em- 
ployed, and then without notice the head of the 
firm closed down twelve factories, turned 6,200 men 
out of employment, the stock fell $14,000,000, and 
the head of the concern, who had been selling his 
own stock in Wall street, made, according to his 
secretary's report, $4,000,000 profit. 

TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES. 

Wherever I go I hear the despairing story of the 
once independent man who is being thrust out of 
business by the relentless trust system. He must 
sell out and become a clerk or he will be crushed. 

This is scientific, but is it compatible with repub- 
lican institutions? How long can a democratic re- 
public last after the right or the opportunity to com- 
pete for wealth or power has been effectually de- 
stroyed, when a young man can no longer expect to 
establish an independent business for himself? 



12 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

It must be plain to every man who takes the 
trouble to think for himself that the trust system 
has already partly destroyed industrial and com- 
mercial liberty in the United States, that its vast 
enginery is rapidly crushing out the principle of in- 
dividual proprietorship. When a combination of 
corporations, working steadily toward the accomp- 
lishment of absolute monopoly (representing a cap- 
italized value of two billions of dollars) stands stout- 
ly to the support of one political party and furnishes 
millions and millions of dollars to a corruption fund 
for the intrenchment of that political party in con- 
trol of the Government, where shall the young man 
who wants to set up in business as his own master 
turn his face? 

It is not the cheapening of manufacture that 
strikes at the vitals of the nation — it is the taking 
away of hope from the young men of the country, it 
is the creation of a power greater than the Govern- 
ment — blind, rapacious, relentless. 

This terrible change in the conditions of life in 
America has occurred within fifteen or twenty 
years. What will the conditions be when the boy 
born to-day is a man? The trusts represent the 
combined, disciplined power of two billions of dol- 
lars now. What will their wealth and power be 
twenty-five years hence? The trusts can nominate 
and elect the President of the United States and 
determine the laws now. What will they be able to 
do when the next generation is grown? Will the 
Constitution of the United States be spared when 
industrial and commercial concentration has placed 
the lives and fortunes of the whole people at the 
mercy of two or three hundred men? 

The young man has little chance of rising in 
business in this country to-day unless he happens 
to be gifted with supreme genius. Every month 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 13 

narrows his opportunities. He is charmed and be- 
fooled by the glittering rhetoric of trust-paid ora- 
tors. He reads the figures which tell the story of 
rapidly increasing wealth in America, and he is daz- 
zled by the sight of unmatched prosperity — for a 
few. Mr. Hanna and Mr. McKinley tell him that 
all this concentration of commercial and industrial 
power is scientific, logical, the irrestistible evolu- 
tion of modern civilization; that to interfere with it 
would be like interfering with the tides of the ocean 
or the progress of the seasons. 

And the young man hears this blasphemy against 
God and humanity, this mocking of institutions and 
conditions to establish which men have wet the 
earth with their blood and tears for a thousand 
years, and he believes Mr. Hanna — or does he? 

In twenty years we have witnessed the growth 
of the trust system to a point where the President 
of the United States dares not to oppose its bidding. 
Can we find a President who has manhood and 
intelligence and prophecy enough in him to use the 
whole power of the Government to check the blind 
brutality of this strangling process? If so, can he 
be elected? — James Creelman in the New York 
World. 

William Lloyd Garrison on "Democracy's Insid- 
ious Foes:" 

"In place of a people's government we have a 
government trust in the hands of a few people. In 
Massachusetts Mr. Lodge prepares the State con- 
ventions without consulting the voters about the 
issues, and the proceedings are as lifeless and 
unanimous as a stockholders' meeting, where one 
director holds a majority of shares. The same is 
true of other States, while Mr. Hanna undertakes a 
similar service for the whole country and feels large 



14 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

enough to assume and guarantee the contract." 

CORPORATIONS AND LIBERTY. 

Up from all the centuries, up from all the sacri- 
fices of all the patriots, heroes, and martyrs of the 
past has come this government of ours, based upon 
the doctrines of the equal rights of man. If we fail, 
liberty is lost forever. There is no virgin soil, no 
unbroken wilderness in which to plant the seed of 
liberty again as our fathers planted it. But we will 
not fail. 

Now, what is the remedy? In my opinion one of 
the most important remedies is national ownership 
of the railways. But how can this reform be 
brought about? Only by the organization of a 
great political power, independent of party, inde- 
pendent of party bosses, strong enough to drive 
from public life the tools of monopolies and trusts 
and put in their places men prompted by impulses 
for the public welfare. When you have done this 
the rest is easy. 

But how can this power be created? Only by cre- 
ating a non-partisan organization in every voting 
precinct of this nation. It must be an organization 
interfering with no man's politics — so that every 
Republican, every Democrat, every Populist, every 
Prohibitionist, every reformer who is opposed to. 
monopolies and trusts can organize against a can- 
didate who can be controlled by this corrupt cor- 
porate power. 

Abraham Lincoln offered these words of warning 
to his countrymen: "As a result of the war corpora- 
tions have been enthroned and an era of corruption 
in high places will follow. The nominal power of 
the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by 
working upon the prejudices of the people until all 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 15 



SLAVERY UNDER. THE STARS AND STRIPES. 




16 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the repub- 
lic destroyed." 

Lincoln's suspicions were not groundless. Al- 
ready the destructive and corrupt influences of cor- 
porate power have almost done their work. They 
are shattering the foundation stones of the republic. 
Upon each individual citizen rests the responsi- 
bility. — M. J^. Lockwood, President of the Ameri- 
can Anti-Trust League. 

MONEY AND MEN. 

A New York financial paper, possessing excep- 
tional sources of information, reports the following 
as the ''earnings" of some of the principal trust 
companies of that city for the year 1899: 

Per Cent. 

Central Trust 263 

Farmers' Loan and Trust 88 

N. Y. Life Insurance and Trust 80 

Union Trust 78 

U. S. Mortgage and Trust 52 

State Trust 5° 

U. S. Trust 47 

Mercantile Trust 44 

Manhattan 42 1-2 

N. Y. Security Trust 4 1 

Continental Trust • . 4 1 

Guaranty Trust 4° 

Meanwhile the farmer who makes 4 per cent on 
the cost of his farm is lucky, the workingman who 
will average $15 a week the year round is excep- 
tionally fortunate, and Wall street wonders why 
these classes do not share in its enthusiasm over 
revived prosperity. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 17 



GROWTH OF THE TRUSTS. 

The trusts in 1898 and 1899 grew with a rapidity 
never known before. Ninety of them capitalized at 
$3,500,000,000. The entire amount of metallic 
money in the world is $8,000,000,000. Nearly one- 
half of that $8,000,000,000 is represented by these 
ninety trusts 

When President Cleveland attempted to repeal 
the tariff laws he met with an ignominious failure. 
In vain he used all his power; in vain he wrote a 
letter, unique in American political history, plead- 
ing with the Democrats in the Senate to stand by 
the party's pledges and to avoid a subservience to 
protected interests which amounted to "party dis- 
honor." The great protected interests were strong- 
er than the President. They were so intrenched in 
Congress that the President was forced to accept 
the Gorman compromise. Times have changed 
somewhat. The political complexion of the admin- 
istration has changed. But the same protected in- 
terests are still as invincible in Congress. The 
next move will be for international trusts, controll- 
ing the output of the whole world, and from which 
the victim cannot escape by moving. Then some 
trust magnate can command the rulers of the world, 
as they recently have the American executive, and 
"prosperity" will be gauged by the dividend squeeze 
which a big giant can make. 

"STANDARD OIL. 

The Standard Oil quarterly dividend of $20,000,- 
000 on a capital of $100,000,000 is a model instru- 
ment for distributing profits among the people takes 
on a rather sardonic aspect when it is remembered 
that of the 3,000 Standard Oil stockholders less 



18 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

than a dozen hold four-fifths of the total stock and 
receive $16,000,000 of the $20,000,000 dividend; or, 
in other words, each of the favored ones gets about 
$7,000,000 profit yearly. 

STEEL MILLS. 

"What a revelation of the spirit of our modern 
corporation has been given in the last few days 
in the astounding statements of the profit of the 
Carnegie company last year and for the present 
year. A company which is expecting to make 
from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 in the current year 
on a capital of $25,000,000 — to what extent water 
we do not know — asking the State to tax the whole 
nation .under the guise of a tariff, that it may be able 
to increase the wages of its workingmen. — Dr. 
Heber Newton. 

To-day there are the Standard Oil company, the 
Carnegie company, the sugar trust, the Internation- 
al Navigation company, the National City Bank, 
and other colossal corporations which overshadow 
the government itself and are never satisfied. 

When will they have enough? — Chicago Tribune 
(Rep.). 

"Over ten billion dollars of our indebtedness of 
forty billion is due to English money lenders, who 
introduced among us the gold standard. Under 
the low prices of property that has resulted, these 
same Englishmen have been, through mortgage 
scales and cash purchases, and are now, rapidly 
coming into the possession of the propery of our 
once prosperous citizens. Englishmen now own a 
majority of the stock of our railroads. They own 
fifty million acres of land along the Northern Pa- 
cific Railroad, taken in under a mortgage. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 19 

"They own large tracts of land in nearly every 
State in the Union. Lord Scully of England owns 
40,000 acres of land in Logan county, Illinois, and 
40,000 acres in Sangamon county adjoining. He 
owns 50,000 acres in Southern Nebraska and 
Northern Kansas. Englishmen own a beautiful 
island in Lake Superior in the State of Michigan, 
containing 80,000 acres of rich land. They were 
recently asked what they were going to do with it, 
and they replied that they were 'going to stock it 
with English pheasants.' Lord Scully has put 
newly imported Russians on his lands in Illinois 
and introduced among them the Irish rack rent 
landlord system. Thus our lands, the natural 
homes of the people, are passing into the hands of 
the English and American money lenders. A land 
of liberty is being desecrated, and by laws that have 
evaded the intelligence of our people. The 
awakening cannot come too soon! Those who 
would evade and condone the situation are crim- 
inally negligent! 

"We are also being deprived of our balance of 
trade. We have to pay England about $400,000,- 
000 annually in interest on the ten billion of dollars 
or more that our people owe to her money lenders. 
So that our balance of trade must be as much as 
$400,000,000 annually before any money can come 
to us." — Coin on "Money, Trusts and Imperialism." 

Price lists show plainly the extent to which Mc- 
Kinley trusts are enabled to rob the American con- 
sumer, and also show conclusively that there are 
no corresponding trusts in operation in England. 
The following table of comparative prices has been 
compiled from the most recent price lists, great care 
being taken to get corresponding grades and dates 
in their preparation. 



20 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

U. S. Eng. 

price. price. 

Lead, ioo lbs $4?o $3.64 

Litharge, lb o8| .04! 

Wire, smooth, 100 lbs 3.05 2.50 

Barb wire, galvanized, 100 lbs 3.80 2.39 

Wire nails, 100 lbs. 3.38 2.55 

Iron ore, ton 6.125 5.25 

Tin plate, 100 lbs 4.85 3.60 

Sheet steel, 100 lbs 2.70 2.07 * 

Galvanized iron, 100 lbs 3.78 3.23 

Steel beams, 100 lbs 2.30 1.80 

Borax, refined, lb 075 .034 

Lime, barrel 90 .62 

Cream of tartar (crystals) lb 22^ .159 

Bleaching powder, lb 02 J .015 

Castor oil, lb \2\ .066 

Caustic soda, 100 lbs 2.42 1.84 

Cement (Portland best), barrel 2.25 1.11 

Every article in the above list is controlled in 
this country by a monopoly trust, deriving special 
privileges from the Dingley high tariff law. And 
every article quoted is now selling for more than 
i. sold before the organization of its particular trust. 
If there were a corresponding trust in England the 
article would sell for practically the same price in 
that country as in this. — Helena Independent. 

It is undeniable that the most serious danger that 
threatens the perpetuity of untrammeled popular 
sovereignty in this republic is the pernicious and 
constantly growing activity of powerful corpora- 
tions in politics. They go into elections, federal, 
state, county and municipal, with their money and 
their agents, having some selfish end to attain, and 
often succeed in defeating the purpose for which, 
manhood suffrage was instituted. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 21 

The enormous number of employes which many 
of them have in their service tempts them to add 
coercion to their other methods for securing votes 
for the candidate favored by them. Failing to se- 
cure a sufficient number of city councilmen, legis- 
lators or congressmen, pledged to pass laws favor- 
ing their interests, they pursue the end in view 
through an organized lobby, which too frequently 
succeeds in tempting public servants, originally 
honest, to betray the trust of their constituents. 

If such corporations happen to be defeated in 
both these forums, they proceed to invade the 
temple of justice with their money-changing de- 
vices and employ their corrupting machinations 
upon the courts and the officials intrusted with the 
execution of the laws. — Kansas City Times. 

T. H. Jones, an industrial subcommission wit- 
ness, said: 

"Unionism, as I see it, is the most selfish organi- 
sation that ever has been sprung on mankind. It 
desires bread and butter for the union man and his 
family and starvation and death for the nonunion 
man and his family. Unions have decreed that all 
men outside of their organization must be union- 
ized or they can not work. I claim that an organi- 
zation that seeks to deny the right of existence to 
all men outside of that organization has no rights 
whatever on American soil." 

INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY. 

'The man who is employed for wages is as much 
a business man as his employer. The attorney in 
a country town is as much a business man as the 
corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The 
merchant at the crossroads store is as much a busi- 
ness man as the merchant of New York. The 



22 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils 
all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, 
and by the application of brain and muscle to the 
natural resources of this country creates wealth, is 
as much a business man as the man who goes upon 
the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. 
The miners who go a thousand feet into the earth 
or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth 
from their hiding places the precious metals to be 
poured in the channels of trade are as much business 
men as the few financial magnates who in a back 
room corner the money of the world." — W. J. 
Bryan in the campaign of 1896. 

"Liberty cannot long endure," says Webster, "in 
any country where the tendency is to concentrate 
wealth in the hands of a few." 

"Foreign noblemen own more land in this coun- 
try than was comprised in the thirteen original col- 



MACHINERY MULTIPLYING WEALTH 
FOR THE OWNERS. 

One-horse power is equivalent to the power of 
six men. Thus, if the work of 63,481 men in the 
flour mills of the United States is supplemented 
with the use of 752,365 horse-power, the power is 
equivalent to the work of 4,514,190 additional men. 
In other words, the power does seventy-one times 
as much work as the employes. The ratio differs 
radically in different industries. Mr. Wright finds 
that the total horse-power used in the United States 
in 1890 was about 6,000,000, equivalent to the work 
of 36,000,000 men, while only 4,476,884 persons 
were employed, the two kinds of power having a 
ratio of 8 to 1. A force of 36,000,000 men repre- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 23 

sents a population of 180,000,000, so that, if the 
products of the manufacturing establishments were 
all made by hand, it would require a population of 
that size to do it, witn none left for agriculture, 
trade, transportation, mining, forestry, the profes- 
sions, or any other occupations. 

About the middle of the nineteenth century Sir 
John Lubbock of England declared: 'There is 
likely to be an effort made by the capital class to 
fasten upon the world a rule through their wealth, 
and by means of reduced wages place the masses 
upon a footing more degrading and dependent 
than has ever been known in history. The spirit 
of money worshipers seems to be rapidly develop- 
ing in this direction." 

A few years later Abraham Lincoln reiterated 
the same sentiment in his message to Congress in 
1861. This important warning is omitted in later 
histories: 

"Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a 
possible refuge from the power of the people. In 
my present position I could scarcely be justified 
.were I to omit raising a warning voice against the 
approach of returning despotism. There is one 
point to which I ask a brief attention. It is the 
effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if 
not above, labor, in the structure of government. 
* * * Let them beware of surrendering a 
political power which they already have, and which 
if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door 
of advancement against such as they, and to fix new 
disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty 
shall be lost." 

Near the close of the war, in reply to a letter 
from a friend in Illinois, President Lincoln said: 
"Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that 



24 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

this cruel war is nearing its close. It has cost a 
vast amount of treasure and blood. The best 
blood of the flower of American youth has been 
freely offered upon our country' s altar that the 
nation might live. It has been indeed a trying' 
hour for the republic; but I see in the near future 
a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes 
me to tremble for the safety of my country. 

"As a result of the war, corporations have been 
enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places 
will follow, and the money power of the country 
will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon 
the prejudices of the people until all wealth is ag- 
gregated in a few hands and the republic is de- 
stroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for 
the safety of my country than ever before, even in 
the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions 
may prove groundless." 

As the result of long and careful investigation 
Miss Jane Addams of Hull House fame, Chicago, 
makes the statement that drunkenness and laziness 
are the cause of but 13 per cent of pauperism, while 
over against that is set the fact that 41 per cent is 
the result of sickness, due not to dissipation, but to 
the unsanitary conditions which surround the poor 
in large cities. Along the same line is the further 
statement that each succeeding generation born 
in large cities shows a decreasing physical stamina, 
most of the paupers coming from the third city- 
born generation. 

If nearly one-half of the pauperism in Chicago 
is due to sickness caused by unsanitary and un- 
healthful surroundings the city should give imme- 
diate attention to the improvement of conditions in 
the slums as a matter of mere business economy. 
This would seem to be the last argument needed 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 25 

to set in force a movement which is also demanded 
by every consideration of religion and philan- 
thropy. 

The Revue Scientifique contains statistics show- 
ing the intimate relation between the number of 
people in a house and the rate of mortality. Thus 
in London, where the average number of inhabit- 
ants to a house is 8, the death rate is 23 per thous- 
and; in Berlin, with 32 persons to a dwelling, the 
death rate is 25. Paris has 35 persons to a house 
and a death rate of 28. St. Petersburg has 52 per- 
sons, with a death rate of 41, and Vienna, the most 
overcrowded city in Europe, with 55 persons in 
each building, has the largest death rate, 47. 

Owing to the wide absorption of public utilities 
by vast corporations and the exaltation of city life 
over that of the country, American municipalities 
are becoming as crowded as those in Europe. 

BANKS. 

The National City Bank acted for the Govern- 
ment in the transfer of the huge payments from the 
Pacific railroads to the treasury, its intermediation 
preventing disturbance of the money market. The 
treasury acting alone would have caused a shock 
to the mechanism of finance. 

It was also the fiscal agent of the United States 
in the payment of the $20,000,000 to Spain under 
the terms of the treaty of Paris, in payment for the 
Philippine Islands. More recently the Secretary 
of the Treasury has made it the place of first de- 
posit for the internal revenue receipts of $1,000,000 
a day, which he is diverting from the treasury in 
order to prevent an accumulation there of surplus 
funds necessary for the conduct of the people's busi- 
ness. This transaction is not only profitable to the 



26 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

bank, but it gives it valuable prestige by adver- 
tising its peculiar relation to the administration. 

Two hundred and forty-five thousand and odd 
individuals and firms doing business on their own 
capital have failed since 1862, with liabilities of 
more than seven billion dollars. 

Over twelve thousand banking corporations do- 
ing business with one dollar of their own and one 
dollar of the people's money have, since 1862, made 
net profits of more than five billion dollars. 

In Jackson's time, one national bank, with $28,- 
000,000 in capital, the majority of which was owned 
by the government, openly attempted to control 
the election of President, and would have succeeded 
with a less popular man than Jackson. 

The banking institutions of the country now 
control fully five hundred times as much capital, 
and their chief stockholders openly boasted in 1896 
that no man inimical to their interests could be- 
come President of the United States. 

The Textile Record of America, in January of 
1898, asked the pertinent question, "Upon what 
ground of equity can it be demanded that the credit 
of the government should be given to banks for 
the profit of their stockholders?" The government 
is willing to loan money on the collateral of the 
bank, but not on that of the countryman's farm. 

1 SENATORIAL ELECTIONS. 

Bryce, in his "American Commonwealth," gives 
General James B. Weaver, of Iowa, credit for in- 
troducing the first resolution proposing an amend- 
ment to the Federal Constitution providing for 
the election of United States Senators by a direct 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 2.7 

vote of the people. The resolution was introduced 
in the Forty-sixth Congress, on January 31, 1881. 

Nothing more clearly shows the growth of pub- 
lic opinion or more fully demonstrates the irre- 
sistible force of a good idea than the progress 
which this reform has made during the past 
eighteen years. The Democratic House of Repre- 
sentatives, in the Fifty-second Congress, and again 
in the Fifty-third, adopted resolutions proposing 
such an amendment, but the resolutions died in the 
Senate committee. No one who has watched the 
trend of events can doubt that public sentiment will 
finally prevail. If the amendment is once sub- 
mitted to the States for ratification they will make 
quick work of its adoption, for there is scarcely a 
State where there is not an overwhelming majority 
in favor of this effort to bring the government 
closer to the people. The Legislature of Nebraska, 
at its recent session, adopted a resolution declaring 
in favor of the popular election of Senators. In the 
State Senate the resolution was adopted without a 
roll call; in the House the vote stood eighty-four to 
five — a little more than sixteen to one in favor of 
the proposition. 

Several reasons may be suggested for the change. 

First — Popular election would make the Senator 
more truly the representative of the people for 
whom he speaks. 

Second — Whatever may have been the original 
reason for the present method of electing Senators, 
new conditions have made a change imperative. 
The corporations are now potent in their influence, 
and can control the action of Legislatures much 
easier than they can popular elections. It is some- 
times argued that party conventions would be as 
liable to nominate undesirable candidates for the 
Senate as Legislatures are to elect them, but there 



28 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

is an important difference. When a convention 
nominates an undesirable man the people sit in 
judgment upon the nomination, and the fear of 
rejection at the polls acts as a restraint upon the 
convention. When a Legislature elects an unde- 
sirable man for the Senate there is no appeal from 
its decision. 

Third — The present method of electing Senators 
interferes seriously with State affairs. Where the 
State Legislatures meet every two years, two Leg- 
islatures out of every three elect a Senator, and 
when a Senatorial election is pending party lines 
are drawn and the candidate's capacity for State 
affairs is often overshadowed by the necessity of 
having a party majority in the Legislature. 

Fourth — Sometimes the Legislature adjourns 
without electing, and then the State has only hajf 
of its Senatorial representation for two years. 

Fifth — If there was no other reason for the 
change, a sufficient reason would be found in the 
scandals growing out of Senatorial elections. The 
charge of direct bribery is made with increasing 
frequency, and indirect forms of bribery are even 
more common. 

An amendment to the Constitution will enable 
the people to select their Senators as they select 
their other officers, thus giving them the choice 
and placing within their power the means of pun- 
ishment if official trust is betrayed. — William J. 
Bryan, in the New York Journal, May 4, 1899. 

CONTRACT FRAUDS. 

BATTLESHIPS. 

One of the mysteries attending our progress as 
a great sea-power and world-power is the powerful 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 29 

contrast between the contract price and the actual 
cost of warships. 

Here are a few examples which we cull from the 
official reports bearing on the subject. The total 
cost of the battleship Oregon w r as $5,914,021.90, 
an excess of $2,612,511.90 over her contract price. 
The Massachusetts actually cost when finished 
$5,401,844.97, which was $2,311,844.97 more than 
the contractors stipulated to construct her for. 
The Indiana's contract price was $3,090,000, but 
her actual cost was $2,243,708.05 above that sum. 

In short, it appears that the rule of naval con- 
struction is that the United States government 
pays an average of about $2,000,000 for every bat- 
tleship added to its new navy over and above the 
sum named in the contract as the price to be paid 
to her builders. 

Uncle Sam appears to be at an inverted naval bar- 
gain-counter, at which all the goods he purchases 
are marked up from 40 to 50 per cent above regular 
prices. He is undoubtedly becoming a sea-power 
and a world-power — and a good thing for the bat- 
tleship builders! No wonder the question is 
pressed, Why should not the government build its 
own ships, as it makes its own guns? 

THE CARTER CASE. 

Captain Oberlin M. Carter was tried and con- 
victed by court-martial for frauds in the contracts 
for harbor work at Savannah and elsewhere at the 
south. He was captain in the corps of engineers 
and let contracts for the improvements under his 
charge. The contractors were the members of the 
American Construction Company, composed of 
New York capitalists and speculators. Captain 
Carter was also overseer of the work, inspected the 



30 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

materials used by the contractors and audited their 
bills. 

The amount of the frauds and thefts in which 
Captain Carter was implicated was $2,000,000 or 
$3,000,000. On conviction he was sentenced to 
dismissal from the army, to have the shameful 
record of his sentence published in a newspaper 
printed at his home town in Pennsylvania, to pay a 
fine of $5,000 and to be imprisoned for five years. 

Every kind of social, political and financial influ- 
ence was applied to procure a reversal of the sen- 
tence of the military court or to delay its execution. 
The case became a flagrant public scandal. He 
was tried and sentenced two years ago. Under a 
pretense of examining the record, Secretary of War 
Alger, Attorney General Griggs and President Mc- 
Kinley held up the report of the court-marital for a 
year and a half. In the meantime small offenders 
convicted by the military courts were sent to prison 
by the score. At length, when obstruction was no 
longer possible, the record of the court-martial 
was approved and execution issued. 

Then proceedings in the civil courts were inter- 
posed. These finally came to an end. In the 
meantime attempts to recover the stolen millions 
for the loss of which he was responsible are aban- 
doned. 

THE POSTOFFICE. 

There seems to be little doubt that the railroads 
have long ceased to carry the mails at reasonable 
rates. The enormous reductions that -have taken 
place in passenger and freight rates since 1878 have 
not been applied to the mails.. While the improved 
facilities and methods which have come in during 
that period have resulted in a reduction of 35 per 
cent on freight and 17J per cent on passenger 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 3 1 

rates, the government has had no reduction what- 
ever on the rates charged for carrying the mails. 
While every large private shipper is getting com- 
mutation rates, the government, which is the largest 
and most regular shipper, is paying on the basis 
of the railway conditions of a quarter of a century 
ago. 

The average mail haul is 813 miles. Where a 
passenger and his baggage are hauled over this dis- 
tance the commutation charge is 2.07 cents a mile. 
W^here 200 pounds of first-class freight are hauled 
over this length of track the shipper gets a com- 
mutation rate oi 1.37 cents a mile. For 200 pounds 
of mail the rate paid is $94.77 a mile. If the pas- 
sengers carried in 1898 had been charged on the 
basis of the mail rates the gross passenger revenues 
of the railroads, instead of being $267,000,000, 
would have been $80,000,000,000. 

The $35,582,439 paid to the railroads for the 
transportation of mails in 1898 was at least double 
what any private corporation would have paid for 
the same service. 

It seems clear that this is the vital point upon 
which the efforts at reform should be concentrated. 
While the second-class mail matter is a burden at 
this moment, probably it would not be so if all 
the mail matter were carried at rates corresponding 
with those which the railroads give to express com- 
panies and to all large private shippers. If the 
railway charges on mail matter were reduced 25 per 
cent there would be no deficit in the postal rev- 
enues. In 1898 this would have saved the postal 
department $8,895,609, and the department would 
have finished the year with a surplus of $2,284,833, 
instead of an actual deficit of $6,610,776. This is 
the kernel of the matter. 

Every attempt to obtain any trustworthy infor- 



32 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

mation on this subject from the postoffice depart- 
ment is a failure. The department shuts up like a 
clam whenever approached on this matter. This is 
not to be wondered at, since the railway mail service 
is under the management of the Second Assistant 
Postmaster General, who was one of the special 
counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and was ap- 
pointed because of that fact. He cannot be 
expected to give any information adverse to the 
interests of the railroads. 

The people of the United States ought to under- 
stand that the real cause of the postal deficit is 
found in railway overcharges of the most flagrant 
nature. The truth should be known. While other 
shippers have enjoyed an average reduction of 35 
per cent in freight rates since 1878, the government 
has received no reduction whatever on the rates 
charged for carrying the mails. The private ship- 
per gets a commutation rate of 1.37 cents a mile on 
freight where the government is charged $94.77 a 
mile for the same weight of mail. The disparity is 
so enormous and so unnecessary that the mere 
statement of the figures will convince most people 
of the need for immediate reform. 

If the railway charges on mail matter were re- 
duced 25 per cent there would be no deficit, and 
there would no longer be any need of bothering 
with the minor affair of second-class rates. That 
such a reduction would still leave a liberal margin 
of profit for the railroads will be evident to any 
one who examines the figures. The $35,000,000 
now paid annually for hauling the mails will be 
seen to be at least double what any private corpora- 
tion would pay for the same service. A reasonable 
readjustment of the railway charges would at once 
place the department on a self-sustaining basis, 
with a surplus of several millions in place of the 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 33 

present annual deficit. — Chicago Tribune (Repub.). 

The Secretary of the United States. Senate paid 
out some astonishing sums for the personal grati- 
fication of Senators in less than two months of last 
year. 

He subscribed for all the leading magazines and 
newspapers for each Senator that cares to read 
them and paid $100 each to the fourteen Senators 
who do not indulge in that luxury, as a commuta- 
tion for the periodicals they might have had if they 
had wanted them. He paid $900 for the telegrams 
of Senators and $200 for engraving and printing 
their personal visiting cards. He furnished hair- 
brushes to all but the fourteen who do not read, 
and who seem to think that brushing the hair is 
an indulgence savoring of aristocracy. To the less 
wild and free, the luxury lovers, he furnished a 
large quantity of expensive toilet soap, besides 
cologne w r aters, quinine and calomel pills, soda 
mints and five gallons of witch hazel — for the lav- 
ing of unspecified bruises. 

The United States Government is great and rich. 
It can afford to suffer this sort of petty peculation. 
But can "senatorial dignity" afford to practice it? 

SENATORIAL LARCENY. 

The Senators of the United States are supplie'd 
'with newspapers, magazines, visiting cards, hair 
brushes, toilet soap, cologne water, quinine, calo- 
mel, soda mint, witch hazel and a long list of other 
personal luxuries free of charge. The Govern- 
ment, or, in other words, the taxpayers, foot the 
bills. Thus has accommodation grown into abuse. 

Roman senators in the most decadent days of 
Rome did not dream of sponging on the people in 
such a bald-faced manner. When the Senators ex- 



34 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

pend $5,000 or so of the people's money on a con- 
gressional funeral junket they have at least the 
excuse that they are paying "the last token of 
respect" to the deceased, who has probably himself 
assisted at more than one such congenial function. 
The people do not mind being robbed so much as 
they do being made the victims of luxurious petty 
larceny on the part of their public servants. The 
Senators are not supposed to be the curled and 
perfumed darlings of the nation, but if they choose 
to consider themselves in that light they should at 
least pay the bills. — Los Angeles Herald. 

POLITICAL PENSIONERS. 

Over 250 incapacitated employes are held in 
service by the Government in the Pepartment of 
the Interior. 

Secretary Ethan Allen Hitchcock, formerly min- 
ister to Russia, revealed this remarkable condition 
in his department in response to a resolution which 
was introduced by Senator Gallinger March 16 and 
which was adopted. Its purpose, on the. surface, 
was to ascertain the number and ages of employes 
in all the departments. Secretary Hay reported 
three over 70 years of age in the State Department, 
and Secretary Long one over 80 and twelve over 
70. Other cabinet officers have made similar re- 
ports. The Government thus saves children the 
expense of taking care of their fathers and pays off 
political debts to influential relatives. 

"EVERY MAN HAS HIS PRICE AND I 
HAVE THE MONEY."— Statement of National 
Political Money Boss. 

MILITARISM. 
The people occasionally get a really striking ob- 
ject lesson of the way they are fleeced to support 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 35 

the military establishment. An example of such 
light is found in the proceedings of the House last 
Wednesday on the army appropriation bill. It 
seems that the pending bill provides for the enor- 
mous sum of $3,000,000 for traveling expenses of 
enlisted men after their discharge from service. 
In the effort of a member to reduce the sum one- 
third we get a glimpse of the bare-faced robbery 
to which the people are subjected in order to line 
the pockets of shoulder-strappers. It is astonish- 
ing, in the first place, that mileage computations in 
the military service are made on the basis of a 
statute enacted before there was a railroad in the 
United States. The cost of travel is now, and has 
been for many years, a mere fraction of what it was 
in the ante-railway period. 

As an example of the outrage perpetrated upon 
the people in this manner is was stated in the 
course of discussion on the bill that u a colonel 
would be allowed $2,389 to travel from San Fran- 
cisco to Washington, whereas his railroad fare 
would be but $77." That is to say, the colonel 
receives from the Government a sum more than 
thirty times in excess of the actual cost of his trans- 
portation. It is noteworthy that -an attempt to 
stop this outrageous scheme of public robbery and 
to introduce an honest mileage system was prompt- 
ly suppressed. — "Los Angeles Herald. 

DRIFTING TOWARD MILITARISM. 

A permanent increase .of the regular army to 
100,000 men, if not to a higher number, now seems 
to be the inevitable result of the policy of "im- 
perial expansion" to which we have been com- 
mitted. The fact must be faced before long, and it 
is better that it should be faced and clearly under- 
stood before the country has drifted into a situation 



36 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

where intelligent consideration and deliberate judg- 
ment on the matter is no longer possible. — Cleve- 
land Plain Dealer. 

PARTISANSHIP. 

Senator Cullom of Illinois said: "I am not pre- 
pared to say yet that I shall vote for the Davis 
amendment providing for free trade, but only be- 
cause I do not understand how far duty to the party 
will compel us to go." So we see that the Illinois 
statesman does not hesitate for a moment to place 
duty to party above duty to country and obedience 
to one's own convictions of right. 

When we reflect upon the real purpose of party 
organization we see that it is to capture the ma- 
chinery of Government — that is, the offices — in 
order that every function may be used primarily for 
the purpose of perpetuating the party machine. 
No fair-minded man will deny this proposition. 
It follows necessarily that no department of govern- 
ment is safe from the assaults of party managers. 
The first object of maintaining the streets, the 
water works, the parks, the libraries, the schools, 
and indeed the whole paraphernalia of government, 
is to provide places for those who can render serv- 
ice to the bosses and secure sufficient votes to 
perpetuate their authority. And this is not due to 
the existence of any special variety of venality in 
the bosses or officeholders. They, like the rest of 
us, are just people. 

Political partyism has for its basis the great un- 
derlying fallacy that the purpose of life is to get 
individual success. This false notion, which so 
many of our people have not yet outgrown, is the 
poison root from which grows every species of vice 
and misery, of lack and surplus that characterize 
our present-day civilization. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 37 

So long as government by party continues no 
department of our Government is safe. Every 
branch of it, even the public schools, which should 
be the citadel of liberty, will be used primarily to 
fasten upon the people the hierarchy of party, just 
as the king in ancient times Used every function of 
government to perpetuate his reign. 

The most encouraging sign in the political hori- 
zon is the growth, of the non-partisan spirit. We 
are approaching the time when a majority of the 
voters will vote as patriots and not as partisans. 

When every citizen votes according to the dic- 
tates of an awakened social conscience and an en- 
lightened intellect our public schools and all our 
beneficent institutions will be safe, and there is no 
other safety except that which is thus secured. — 
Samuel M. Jones, Mayor of Toledo. 

The partisanship of the Supreme Court has long 
since caused it to lose its sacro-sanct reputation 
and be known as a body of fallible lawyers having a 
well-paid situation for life. 

It owes its formation and existence to English 
debtors as a tribunal for the settlement of English 
debts. 

IMPERIALISM. 

"McKinley is working as they work in monar- 
chies — under the cover of secrecy. He has ordered 
all press dispatches to be censored. He has or- 
dered all that which reflects upon the administra- 
tion cut out. That is the way they do in mon- 
archies. 

"McKinley has overstepped the powers given 
the President by the Constitution. Whoever gave 
him the right to have a policy of his own? If, 
one year ago last April, when patriotism and pub- 



38 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

lie spirit were at a higher point than at any time 
'since '61, when the hearts of men were moved as 
though by a benediction, if at that time anyone 
had said that this country would free one people 
and put the fetters upon another people, every one 
would have exclaimed, 'Impossible.' But just this 
has happened. 

"Mr. Hanna, when he returned from Europe, 
was interviewed upon what he thought of England's 
government. He said — and I quote word for word 
from that interview — he said that in some respects 
he liked England's form of government better than 
ours. What he liked about it was its stability. 
Mark that word, 'stability.' What is a banker's 
idea of stability? It is to have all lines of finance 
trained behind his banking counter. That's sta- 
bility for him. These wealthy men have produced 
what they call stability by the organization of 
trusts which control business, which places firmly 
the volume of trade in their hands. Now they want 
stability of government. By stability of govern- 
ment they mean one mind, and that one mind the 
resultant of their power and influence. What did 
Mr. Hanna mean when he said he liked the stability 
of England's government? He meant that he fav- 
ored a government which was not subject to the 
caprices and passions of the people." — Congress- 
man Charles A. Towne. 

As a close imitator of George III, William the 
Conqueror, by the grace of the Republican party 
President of the United States, has greatly outdone 
his illustrious exemplar. George III established 
a precedent in attempting to rule the American 
colonies outside of the Constitution, but his imi- 
tator has gone the autocratic king one better by 
inducing Congress to set itself above the Constitu- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 39 

tion, the creation above the creator, and to inaugu- 
rate a colonial policy unknown to the Constitution 
whence Congress derives all its powers. The Brit- 
ish king imposed only a trifling duty upon tea and 
a few other unimportant articles on the American 
colonies, but William the Conqueror imposes a 
percentage of the whole Dingley tariff schedule 
upon the unfortunate island of Porto Rico and its 
starving people. 

The British king taxed tea and caused a revolu- 
tion; the American conqueror taxes everything. 
Because these wretched inhabitants of the island are 
too weak to revolt the American conqueror turns 
them over to the tender mercies of trusts and com- 
bines. Republican conventions have heretofore 
been in the habit of passing resolutions of sympathy 
with Ireland; now they may very propertly substi- 
tute Porto Rico. While the inhabitants of Hawaii, 
less than 75,000, exclusive of the imported coolie 
labor, are granted a territorial form of self-govern- 
ment, Porto Rico's million inhabitants are placed 
at the absolute mercy of the American conquerer 
and have no voice in the government of the island. 
They may starve, but the right to be heard is de- 
nied to them.— Denver Post. 

Senator Spooner's bill for the control of the 
Philippines gives the President powers over these 
islands and their inhabitants not exceeded by the 
powers of any emperor on earth. It simply de- 
clares that "all military, civil and judicial powers 
shall be exercised in such manner as the President 
of the United States shall direct for maintaining 
and protecting the inhabitants of said islands in the 
free enjoyment of their liberty, property and re- 
ligion." This is as far from "government of the 
people, for the people and by the people," as law 



40 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

can possibly get. It is the essence of absolutism. — 
Grand Rapids Democrat. 

• First, we have the message of the President, de- 
livered to Congress four months ago, in which he 
declares it to be our "plain duty" to abolish all 
customs tariffs on Porto Rican products and give 
them free access to our markets. Then we have 
the report of the War Secretary recommending the 
same course. Then we have the House committee' 
on ways and means, introducing a bill in conformity 
with these recommendations. Then entered' Ox- 
nard, the agent of the sugar trust, and mark the 
changes. First, the bill for free commercial inter- 
course between Porto Rico and the mainland was 
withdrawn by stealth, and in its place one imposing 
tariff duties substituted. Then the President 
changed from plain duty to tariff and began to 
bulldoze members of Congress to pass the substi- 
tuted measure, and now the same performance is 
to be gone through in the Senate. Does anyone 
believe this change to have been made without 
consideration? 

The President is directed by the Constitution to 
give Congress information on the state of the 
Union. He shall "recommend to their considera- 
tion such measures as he shall judge necessary and 
expedient." But he shall perform this duty "from; 
time to time" openly, regularly, in a public manner, 
by formal and official messages to the Congress. 
He shall not lobby privately with members. He 
shall only recommend measures for the considera- 
tion of Congress. He shall not urge the passage 
of a particular measure; only its "consideration." 
Above all, he shall not urge that it be hurried 
through. He must veto hasty legislation. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 41 

Apropos to these Constitutional duties of the 
President, a Republican Senator said: "I will vote 
for the treaty and the tariff at the request of the 
President. I consider both dangerous, foolish and 
unwise. The message of the President and the bill 
appropriating $2,000,000 for Porto Rico have ren- 
dered it impossible for us to justify our course. I 
cannot explain my course to my people except 
to say that the President wanted it, and I did it for 
his sake and his alone." 

President McKinley in the first ten months of his 
administration pardoned ninety-eight bank wreck- 
ers and bank swindlers, which is four times the total 
of pardons granted by any other President. 

WHAT IT COST. 

Henry Loomis Nelson gives the first exhaustive 
statement of the cost of our recent war with Spain 
and of Mr. McKinley's war in the Philippines. 
His figures are drawn from official reports and esti- 
mates to which he gave a careful and conscientious 
examination. 

Mr. Nelson finds the cost of the war with Spain 
to have been $259,341,299; of the war in the Philip- 
pines $64,617,267 in 1899 and a prospective cost of 
$100,885,934 for the current year — a total of $424,- 
844,500. The increased cost of the army and navy 
for the present fiscal year over 1897, due to our 
policy of military ''expansion," will be $100,885,934. 
And with the pensions on account of these wars 
still to come, the total expenditures of the Govern- 
ment have increased from $365,744,160 in 1897 to 
$605,072,180 in 1899 — or from $5.01 per capita of 
the population to $7.97 per capita. 

As the war in the Philippines is now admitted by 
Senator Beveridge and Representative Grosvenor 



42 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

to be a commercial enterprise, Mr. Nelson esti- 
mates the returns from the whole venture in the 
two wars, and taking the wildest guess of the im- 
perialists as to the value of the future trade he 
shows a net loss to the nation of over $500,000,000. 

Those who doubt that the United States is a 
world-power of the first magnitude should have 
been present at the reception tendered to-night by 
the President and Mrs. McKinley to the diplomatic 
corps. The scene was more resplendent than the 
New Year's reception. 

The jeweled insignia of the various orders and 
the splendid uniforms of the continental ambassa- 
dors and ministers and of the orientals were in 
marked contrast to the somber attire of the Ameri- 
can officials, but the handsome raiment lent an air 
of old world magnificence to the scene and made a 
foil for the beautiful robes of the handsome women. 
— Jan. 10, 1900, Times-Herald (Rep.). 

The tension in Washington over the question of 
social rank and official precedence has now reached, 
if it has not passed, the limit of safety. A social 
convulsion can be averted only by prompt and 
heroic action on the part of Congress. The exist- 
ence of the nation was first threatened by the un- 
certainty as to whether the army, in the person of 
General Miles, or the navy, as represented by Ad- 
miral Dewey, should head the line at the Presi- 
dent's New Year's reception. The trouble was 
averted by a decision in favor of the army. Now a 
new trouble has arisen. The wife of the admiral 
has broken the rules and walked in ahead of the 
wives of the supreme court, and the President has 
a "domestic trouble" on his hands. 
. The obvious remedy is the passage of "an act to 
establish the office and department of lord chamber- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 43 

lain and to regulate the social rank and precedence 
of all persons in the service of the United States, 
and of all other persons." No lesser remedy will 
suffice. While all men, according to the Declara- 
tion of Independence, are created equal, they are 
made unequal by accepting a government office, 
and this inequality should be officially recognized. 
Otherwise we might have the wife of a $1,200 clerk 
taking precedence of the wife of an $1,800 clerk, 
or a third assistant secretary "rushing the line" to 
get ahead of a first assistant, and then what would 
become of the Government? — New York World 
(Dem.). 

The Declaration of Independence is not much 
appreciated at the end of the nineteenth century, 
even in the land of Jefferson. Its blatant plati- 
tudes seem somewhat absurd in the more accurate 
knowledge of our times, while a literal interpreta- 
tion of it is too ridiculous for a Western cowboy.— 
f From Editorial in the London Post. 

If by merely stating in any resolution or law 
passed by Congress that "the Constitution does not 
apply to this," what assurance have the people that 
the laws thus enacted will not be to their detriment? 
Yet that is what our national lawmakers propose to 
do. The Beveridge amendment to the Porto 
Rican tariff bill declares that it shall not be con- 
strued as extending the Constitution over the 
island, "and it is hereby declared that the Consti- 
tution of the United States is not extended over 
Porto Rico." 

This would be amusing where it not fraught with 
so much danger to our institutions. The idea 
that Congress, the creature of the Constitution, can 
extend or limit the Constitution, is absurd. Sup- 
pose the Beveridge idea should prevail and the 



44^ WHAT'S THE MATTER 

Supreme Court should declare some pet law to be 
unconstitutional, all that would be needed would 
be for Congress to re-enact the law and declare that 
"the Constitution does not apply to this." When 
the time comes that the Constitution of the United 
States may be suspended by Congressional enact- 
ment it will be time for the formation of another 
kind of Government. — Omaha World Herald. 

CONGRESSIONAL IDEALS. 

Mr. Hill challenged Mr. Hitt to produce a single 
instance where the colonies of England, Germany 
or France had a representative in the home or im- 
perial legislature. 

To this Mr. Hitt replied: "We are essentially a 
popular representative Government, and a republic 
does not need to take lessons from monarchies in 
the application of its own system." 

The London Spectator remarked in an article at 
the outbreak of the Spanish-American war: 

"The American President, however, is authority 
visible and personified. When he is armed with 
the terrible and far-reaching war powers which 
Mr. Lincoln formulated and employed with such 
astonishing results there is no man, except the Rus- 
sian czar, who is so obviously the direct ruler of 
men. The Governor General -of India no doubt 
wields as great powers as the President, or indeed 
greater, for he can, in fact, legislate as well as exe- 
cute; but then he does not, in theory at any rate, 
possess so secure a tenure. During his tenure of 
office the President cannot be dismissed. The Gov- 
ernor General may be recalled or overruled. No 
wonder, then, that the American President is a 
figure of such intense interest to the whole Anglo- 
Saxon world. At this moment it is his order and 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 45 

his will alone which direct the course of the war. 
Whatever he does, America must endure Mr. Mc- 
Kinley till his term of office is over. Congress 
might twitch his elbow a little if they were angry 
with him, but they could not make him change his 
policy." 

Up to January 26, 1900, the Republican party 
was committed by its past record and the utter- 
ances of its leaders to the simple declaration of 
President McKinley's message: 

The markets of the United States should be 
opened up to her products. Our plain duty is to 
abolish all customs tariffs between the United 
States and Porto Rico and give her products free 
access to our markets. 

There has never been a question that we could 
do this "plain duty" constitutionally. The only 
question has been whether or not we could do any- 
thing else constitutionally, as well as honestly, 
justly and wisely. 

The policy declared a duty in the message of 
President McKinley met the instantaneous ap- 
proval of all classes of American citizens. It ap- 
pealed to the sober common sense of the plain peo- 
ple. It was a policy so clear, so square with the 
invariable precedents of the republic in acquiring 
territory, that until the tariff bolt fell in Washing- 
ton the country never dreamed of treating Porto 
Rico otherwise than a territory or its inhabitants 
as citizens. — Chicago Times-Herald (Rep.). 

Concerning this policy, Thomas B. Reed said: 
"When we enter upon a policy of empire we cease 
to be a moral factor in the world's progress." 

Webster, in defining an empire, says that it al- 
ways comprises "variety in the nationality of, or 



46 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

the forms of administration in, constituent and 
subordinate portions." 

"I had the humiliation as representative of the 
American Government of sitting in my office in 
Pretoria and looking upon envelopes bearing the 
official seal of the American Government opened 
and officially sealed with a sticker notifying me that 
the contents had been read by the censor at Dur- 
ban. I looked up international law, but failed to 
find anywhere that one military power could use its 
own discretion as to forwarding the official dis- 
patches of a neutral Government to its representa- 
tive in a beseiged country." 

'The cable service for the Transvaal was abso- 
lutely cut off. I filed one cable in the interest of an 
American at Pretoria, which was refused absolutely 
by the censor at Durban." 

"The situation was such that I could not remain 
in Pretoria, while the Government at home con- 
tinued to leave me in the position of a British 
consul and not an American consul." 

"When I accepted my post as consul I knew 
nothing of any secret alliance between America and 
Great Britain and have seen nothing in the regula- 
tions which make the consul of the American re- 
public subject to the whims and caprice of an Eng- 
lish military censor." — Statement of Consul 
Macrum on his arrival at Washington from the 
Capital of the Boer Republic. 

My friends, two visions rise before me: One of 
a nation growing in population, riches and 
strength; reaching out the strong hand to bring 
within its dominion weaker and distant races and 
lands; holding them by force for the, rapid wealth 
they may bring — with perhaps the occasional 
glory, success and sacrifice of war; a wondrously 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 47 

luxurious life into which the fortunate few shall 
enter; an accumulation of magnificence which for 
a term will charm and dazzle, and then the shadow 
of the awful question whether human nature has 
changed, and the old law, that history repeats 
itself, has lost its force, whether the ascending 
splendor of imperial power is to be followed by the 
descending gloom of luxury, decay and ruin. The 
-other of a nation, where the spirit of the Pilgrim 
and the Huguenot remains the living and controll- 
ing force, affirming that the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the farewell address of the Father of his 
Country and the Monroe Doctrine shall never pass 
into innocuous desuetude; devoting its energies to 
the development of the inexhaustible resources of 
its great continental territory; solving the problem 
of universal personal and political liberty, of a gov- 
ernment by the consent of the governed, where no 
king, no class and no race rules, but each individual 
has equal voice and power in the control of all, 
where wealth comes only as the compensation for 
honest toil of hand or brain, where public service 
is private -duty ; a nation whose supreme value to 
the world lies not in its power, but in its unfailing 
loyalty to the high ideals of its youth, its forever 
lifting its strong hand, not to govern, but only to> 
protect the weak ; and thus the bright shining which 
brightens more and more into the fadeless eternal 
day. — -Extract from an address by the Hon. David 
J. Brewer, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 
delivered at Buffalo, N. Y., February 16, 1899. 

REPUBLICAN RESPECT FOR THE CON- 
STITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. 

It is true that Mount's refusal to obey the United 
States Constitution is not without some precedent, 



48 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

but this does not render the offense any the less out- 
rageous, dangerous and intolerable. We can recog- 
nize no "custom" that is so evidently repugnant 
to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. What 
will become of the administration of justice in the 
country if the "liberty" which Mount and a few 
other executives have taken goes unrebuked and 
the practive of allowing Governors to override the 
mandatory provisions of the Federal Constitution 
is acquiesced in? One Governor is prompted by 
political reasons, another may be influenced by 
racial, religious, personal, economic or any other 
reasons. 

We emphatically do take the ground that the 
Constitution should be observed and fugitives sur- 
rendered at the demands of the authorities entitled 
and bound to make requisition for their return to 
the jurisdiction from which they fled. 

Is it proper for a Governor to stigmatize the 
people of another State by telling them that he has 
no faith in their juries, judges, appellate tribunals 
and executive officials? 

The more the alleged "custom" is considered the 
more revolting and demoralizing it is seen to be. — 
Chicago Evening Post. 

HEREDITARY SOVEREIGN OR BOSS- 
MADE. PRESIDENTIAL SOVEREIGN. 

In a pamphlet circulated by the Government of 
France in 1810 we read: 

The emperor exercises alone the fullness of sov- 
ereignty as the hereditary representative of the 
nation, as it should be constituted, as it should be 
administered. He is the supreme legislator and 
executor of law; he is the. soul of government. He 
sets into activity all the machinery of the Consti- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 49 

tution. All good citizens pay him respect and 
obedience. There is nothing over him but God and 
the law. All his rights, all his prerogatives are the 
signs of veritable sovereignty. He exercises in all 
plenitude and integrity, without partiality and 
without partisanship ! 

WHY" THERE ARE KINGLY POLITICAL 
BOSSES. 

The people are the depository of ignorance. They 
acknowledge it. The Executive-in-chief knows it. 
All his followers acknowledge it. Why do the 
people retain a sovereignty they are so unfitted to 
hold? — Edinburg Review, Vol. 17. 

SYMPATHY FOR THE BOERS. 

Ex- Judge T. A. Moran said at Chicago mass- 
meeting to welcome Boer peace envoys: "The 
chief reason we should sympathize with the Boers 
is that we, as Americans, dare not do otherwise. But 
our sympathies should not alone be expressed in 
such popular demonstrations, but officially as well. 
Heretofore our Government never failed to recog- 
nize struggling people. 

"A republican form of government is essential to 
the progress and prosperity of the human race. In 
a contest between monarchy and republicanism 
freedom hangs in the balance, as it does to-day in 
the Transvaal. England's Government is good for 
Englishmen, but not for Americans nor Boers. It 
grieved my heart many times to see the flag of 
Great Britain twined with our own starry banner. 
Much more appropriate would it have been had we 
twined the stars and stripes with the flag of a re- 
public. 



50 



WHAT'S THE MATTER 




"Sorry for you, my little friends, but me and my partner here 
have an arrangement that won't permit me to help you " 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 5* 



CRUSHING THE REPUBLICS. 

"It may be said that England promised a good 
government to the Boers. Be it so. I have heard 
something of the same sort before, and it is crush- 
ing out the republicanism of this country. The 
hearts of the people are with the South African 
republics, although the administration winks the 
other eye at England and says nothing." 

Judge Dunne said: 

"As citizens of a republic which owes its exist- 
ence to the intervention of a friendly power, and 
which, within the last five years, has intervened be- 
tween the great, grasping empire which is now 
attempting to annihilate the South African repub- 
lics and Venezuela, and preserved the latter front 
ravishment and spoliation, we meet to inquire 
what has paralyzed the spirit of the American na- 
tion and what causes its executive to stand nerve- 
less and dumb while two guiltless young republics 
are being done to death." 

Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones said: 

"Unfortunately your cause has fallen in a time 
when our traditions lie low, when we have yielded 
to those temptations which have brought such 
calamities to you in South Africa to-night." 

AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY. 

"With greater or less reason the business men 
insist that there is a connection between business 
prosperity and the policy of conquest. This draws 
them toward imperialism. And there is another 
thing. It is that those who already have money 
long for more than money — for glory, and glory is 
gained in war. 



52 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

"It is easy to see, therefore, the points of sym- 
pathy between American imperialism and English 
imperialism. How could American millionaires 
help admiring such typical business men as Mr. 
Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes? 

"Moreover, the imperialistic party is an aristo- 
cratic one. The twenty-five families who stand at 
its head form the 'monde chic/ the 'smart set.' 
They are drawn by their aristocratic sympathies 
toward the land of their ancestors. They have the 
habit of looking up to England. They profess a 
sort of loyalty to England which leads them to con- 
sider it a supreme honor, a crown and consecration 
of their prosperity to be presented at court to the 
queen. 

"They share enthusiastically in the glory of Eng- 
land. That is the reason why, in this present crisis, 
they are for the English Government and soldiers 
and against the peasants of the South African re- 
publics. It is 'smart' to be English. It is there- 
fore impossible for a member of the 'smart 
society' to defend the cause of the Boers. 

"These, rapidly outlined, are some of the bonds 
which exist between American imperialism and 
English imperialism, which will form in the near 
future a formidable union that will be known as 
Anglo-Saxon imperialism." — Count de Castellane 
in the Paris Gaulois. 

COUNTING THE COST. 

The appropriation bills now pending in Congress 
for the coming fiscal year enable us to judge about 
where the Government stands in the matter of ex- 
pense compared with the time prior to the Spanish 
war. We accordingly present side by side the 
appropriations made for the fiscal year 1897 and 
those called for in the pending bills: 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 53 

1901. 1897. 
Legislative, executive 

and judicial $23,874,821 $21,519,750 

Sundry civil 55,000,000 29,812,113 

Army 11 1,600,364 23,278,402 

Navy 61,209,916 30,562,660 

Fortifications 7,093,488 7,377,888 

Indian service 7,328,203 7,390,496 

Diplomatic and consu- 
lar . .. i,743408 1,643,559 

Pensions . . . . : 145,245,230 141,328,580 

District of •Columbia. . 6,742,519 5,900,319 

Agriculture 3,500,000 3> 2 55,53 2 

Military academy .... 500,000 449,525 

Deficiencies 19,965,089 13,900,106 

Rivers and harbors 15,944,147 

Miscellaneous 423,304 

Total $443,803,038 $302,786,381 

This is all aside from the costs of the postal 
service above revenue and certain annual appro- 
priations as for interest on the public debt. The 
1897 appropriations include a river and harbor bill, 
which is to be passed over this year, and which, ac- 
cordingly, for purposes of comparison, should be 
removed from the above table. The 1897 total 
would then be $286,842,234, compared with $443,- 
803,038 for the coming fiscal year — an increase of 
$156,960,804, or more than 54 per cent. — Spring- 
field Republican. 

MILITARISM. 

The keeping of the inhabitants of the Coeur 
d'Alene district in military subjection to United 
States troops for nearly a year forms a black chap- 



54 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

ter in the history of the Republican administration. 
It furnishes a good object lesson for the people 
and shows the practical workings of militarism. 

If, at the instigation of a trust, trial by jury, 
habeas corpus and other Constitutional guarantees 
can be withdrawn from the citizens of a sovereign 
State and a shoulder-strapped martinet is empow- 
ered to substitute in Idaho the rule of the bayonet 
for the law of the land, how soon may it not be 
before the tyrannous and imperial precedent is 
followed in Missouri or Kansas, Illinois or New 
York? 

If the plain people of the United States will read 
the evidence which has been brought out by the 
Congressional committee that has been investigat- 
ing the horrors of the "bull pen" and other inci- 
dents in the eleven months of martial law inflicted 
upon the citizens of Shoshone county, Idaho, they 
will not feel encouraged to endorse imperialism 
and militarism. — Kansas City Times. 

One of the results of our new venture in colonial 
expansion is illustrated by the great commotion 
caused by the invitation to the Due d'Arcos to at- 
tend the Dewey celebration. 

Three or four years ago this gaucherie would 
have been passed off as, at worst, a broad Chicago 
joke. If some king of an effete monarchy of 
Europe didn't like it he could lump it. What did 
we care about international diplomacy? By Jingo, 
we were in a position to defy ; em. If they didn't 
like our style they could — and so forth. 

Now observe the change. The President sent 
for the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State 
called on the Spanish Minister. A note of apology 
was framed beginning "Honored Sir" and ending 
"with renewed assurances of my most distinguished 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 55 

consideration." The cable vibrated with a most 
portentous message. The American Minister at 
Madrid — we forget his name — tore through the 
streets to the ministry of foreign affairs. It was a 
great mistake. It was a horrible crime. It was an 
outrage for which we can never atone sufficiently. 
Would his excellency convey to her majesty, the 
queen regent, the regret felt by the President for 
this unfortunate occurrence, with renewed assuran- 
ces, etc.? Still is Spain unappeased. The Duke of 
Arcos rages. The courts of Europe are shocked. 
Are we drifting into the condition of the Euro- 
pean countries, where a citizen is afraid to step on a 
match lest he set- a nervous court into hysterics? 
In London they stop plays in which his imperial 
majesty, the Sultan of Turkey, is mildly ridiculed. 
In Paris they confiscate newspapers that offend the 
amour propre of the Emperor William. Is the 
time coming when we must give up our innocent 
little Twelfth ward joke for fear we shall disturb 
"the nice balance of European power?" — Chicago 
Journal (Independent). 

POLITICS IN THE REGULAR ARMY. 

The meddling of the politicians did not cease with 
the war, but has been extended to the regular army. 
Among the least injurious instances of the con- 
tempt for propriety and justice has been the ap- 
pointment of civilians 60 years old, at the request of 
politicians, as paymasters. After a brief service 
these favorites are placed on the retired list for life, 
on equal terms with men whose best years have 
been given to the army. 

It is asserted that a large proportion of the chap- 
lains now in the army were appointed through po- 
litical influence, and that nearly all the chaplains as- 



5^ WHAT'S THE MATTER 

signed to the regiments in the Philippines have 
been able to remain in this country while drawing 
their pay and emoluments with unfailing regularity. 
It is positively affirmed that virtually all the regi- 
ments which are often under fire are without their 
regular chaplains, and that but for the generosity of 
Miss Helen Gould our army there would be without 
religious ministrations. Washington correspond- 
ents in commenting on the bill to restore the rank 
of Lieutenant General (for the benefit of General 
Miles) and-to give to the Adjutant General the rank 
of Major General (for the benefit of Corbin), say 
that these two bitter enemies have suspended hostil- 
ities and pooled their issues; that as neither can 
achieve his promotion alone they have combined 
their political influence to "work" Congress. — Phil- 
adelphia Record. 

Human nature in Rome was not so different from 
human nature in the United States that as an ex- 
ample to us it can safely be ignored. As long as 
the Roman Republic spread only over contiguous 
territory, it was ''an indissoluble union of inde- 
structible states," but when it entered upon its con- 
quest of colonial empire, the republic was doomed 
and imperialism enthroned. 

The foundations of a republic are the intelligence, 
independence and integrity of its citizens. Where 
the citizens are too ignorant to exercise an intelli- 
gent ballot, too dependent to exercise a free ballot, 
or too corrupt to exercise an honest ballot, repub- 
lican government becomes impossible. 

The Roman Republic was not overthrown by am- 
bition, but fell through corruption, and to realize 
adequately what is threatening us we should re- 
member what has happened before under somewhat 
similar conditions. American citizens may profit- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 57 

ably reread at this time the introductory chapters of 
Froude's Caesar, where the events and causes lead- 
ing to the dissolution of the Roman Republic are 
clearly and forcibly set forth. — W. R. Hearst, in 
New York Journal. 

FROUDE'S ROMAN LESSONS FOR AMER- 
ICA. 

To the student of political history, and to the 
English student above all others, the conversion of 
the Roman Republic into a military empire com- 
mands a peculiar interest. Notwithstanding many 
differences, the English and the Romans essentially 
resemble one another. The early Romans pos- 
sessed the faculty of self-government beyond any 
people of whom we have historical knowledge, with 
the one exception of ourselves. In virtue of their 
temporal freedom, they became the most powerful 
nation in the known world; and their liberties per- 
ished only when Rome became the mistress of con- 
quered races, to whom she was unable or unwilling 
to extend her privileges. 

If there be one lesson which history clearly teach- 
es, it is this, that free nations cannot govern subject 
provinces. If they are unable or unwilling to ad- 
mit their dependencies to share their own constitu- 
tion, the constitution itself will fall in pieces from' 
mere incompetence for its duties. 

THE PATHOLOGY OF NATIONS. 

The life of a nation, like the life of a man, may 
be prolonged in honor into the fulness of its time, 
or it may perish prematurely, for want of guidance, 
by violence or internal disorders. And thus the 
history of national revolutions is to statesmanship 
what the pathology of disease is to the art of medi- 
cine. 



58 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

The physician cannot arrest the coming on of 
age. Where disease has laid hold upon the con- 
stitution he cannot expel it. But he may check the 
progress of the evil if he can recognize the symp- 
toms in time. He can save life at the cost of an 
unsound limb. He can tell us how to preserve our 
health when we have it; he can warn us of the 
conditions under which particular disorders will 
have us at disadvantage. 

And so with nations; amidst the endless variety 
of circumstances there are constant phenomena 
which give notice of approaching danger; there are 
courses of action which have uniformly produced 
the same results; and the wise politicians are those 
who have learned from experience the real tenden- 
cies of things, unmisled by superficial differences, 
who can shun the rocks where others have been 
wrecked, or from foresight of what is coming can be 
cool when the peril is upon them. 

For these reasons the fall of the Roman Republic 
is exceptionally instructive to us. A constitutional 
government the most enduring and the most power- 
ful that ever existed was put on its trial and found 
wanting. We see it in its growth ; we see the causes 
which undermined its strength. We see attempts 
to check the growing mischief fail, and we see why 
they failed. 

OUR AGE FORESHADOWED. - 

With such vividness, with such transparent clear- 
ness, the age stands before us of Cato and Pompey, 
of Cicero and Julius Caesar; the more distinctly be- 
cause it was an age in so many ways the counterpart 
of our own, the blossoming period of the old civili- 
zation, when the intellect was trained to the high- 
est point which it could reach, and on the great sub- 
jects of human interest, on morals and politics, on 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 59 

poetry and art, even on religion itself and the specu- 
lative problems of life, men thought as we think, 
doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue, as- 
pired and struggled after the same objects. 

It was an age of material progress and material 
civilization; an age of civil liberty and intellectual 
culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of sa- 
lons and of dinner parties, of senatorial majorities 
and electoral corruption. 

The highest offices of state were open in theory 
to the meanest citizen; they were confined, in fact, 
to those who had the longest purses, or the most 
ready use of the tongue on popular platforms. Dis- 
tinctions of birth had been exchanged for distinc- 
tions of wealth. 

The struggles between plebeians and patricians 
for equality of privilege were over, and a new divi- 
sion had been formed between the party of property 
and a party who desired a change in the structure 
of society. The free cultivators were disappearing 
from the soil. 

Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism 
meant the ascendancy of the party which would 
maintain the existing order of things, or would 
overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the 
good things which alone were valued. 

Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule 
of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. 
The educated in their hearts disbelieved it. Tem- 
ples were still built with increasing splendor; the es- 
tablished forms were scrupulously observed. Pub- 
lic men spoke conventionally of Providence, that 
they might throw on their opponents the odium 
of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any 
serious meaning, there was none remaining be- 
yond the circle of the silent, patient, ignorant mul- 
titude. 



60 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated 
with cant — cant moral, cant political, cant religious; 
an affectation of high principle which had ceased 
to touch the conduct, and flowed on in an increasing 
volume of insincere and unreal speech. 

Tendencies now in operation may a few genera- 
tions hence land modern society in similar conclu- 
sions, unless other convictions revive meanwhile 
and get the mastery of them ; of which possibility no 
more need be said than this, that unless there be 
such a revival in some shape or other, the forces, 
whatever they be, which control the forms in which 
human things adjust themselves, will make an end 
again, as they made an end before, of what are 
called free institutions. 

THE RACE FOR WEALTH. 

To make money — money by any means, lawful or 
unlawful — became the universal passion. Money! 
The cry was still money! — money was the one 
thought from the highest Senator to the poorest 
wretch who sold his vote in the Comitia. 

For money judges gave unjust decrees and juries 
gave corrupt. verdicts. Governors held their prov- 
inces for one, two or three years; they went out 
bankrupt from extravagance, they returned with 
millions for fresh riot. 

The opportunities opened for men to advance 
their fortunes in other parts of the world drained 
Italy of many of its most enterprising citizens. The 
grandsons of the yeomen who had held at bay 
Pyrrhus and Hannibal sold their farms and went 
away. The small holdings , merged rapidly into> 
large estates bought up by the Roman capitalists. 

At the final settlement of Italy some millions of 
acres had been reserved to the State as public prop- 
erty. The "public land/' as the reserved portion 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 6l 

was called, had been leased on easy terms to fami- 
lies with political influence, and by lapse of time, by 
connivance and right of occupation these families 
were beginning to regard their tenures as their pri- 
vate property and to treat them as lords of manors 
in England have treated the "commons." Thus 
everywhere the small farmers were disappearing 
and the soil of Italy was fast passing into the hands 
of a few territorial magnates. 

PLUTOCRACY AND PROLETARIAT. 

The multitude was kept quiet by the morsels of 
meat which were flung to it when it threatened to 
be troublesome. The seven thousand in Israel, the 
few who in all states and in all times remained pure 
in the midst of evil, looked on with disgust, fearing 
that any remedy which they might try might be 
worse than the disease. 

All orders in a society may be wise and virtuous, 
but all cannot be rich. Wealth which is used only 
for idle luxury is always envied, and envy soon 
curdles into hate. 

It is easy to persuade the masses that the good 
things of this world are unjustly divided, especially 
when it happens to be the exact truth. It is not 
easy to set limits to an agitation once set on foot, 
however justly it may have been provoked, when 
the cry for change is at once stimulated by interest 
and can disguise its real character under the pas- 
sionate language of patriotism. 

But it was not to be expected that men of noble 
natures, young men especially, whose enthusiasm 
had not been cooled by experience, would sit calm- 
ly by while their country was going thus headlong 
to perdition. Redemption, if redemption was to 
be hoped for, could come only from free citizens in 
the country districts, whose manners and whose 



62 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

minds were still uncontaminated, in whom the an- 
cient habits of life still survived, who still believed 
in the gods, who were contented to follow the 
wholesome round of honest labor. The numbers 
of such citizens were fast dwindling away before 
the omnivorous appetite of the rich for territorial 
aggrandizement. 

GOVERNMENT AN INSTRUMENT OF 
LOOT. 

Governors with their staffs, permanent officials, 
contractors for the revenue, negotiators, bill bro- 
kers, bankers, merchants, were scattered every- 
where in thousands. Money poured in upon them 
in rolling streams of gold. 

The largest share of the spoils fell to the Senate 
and the Senatorial families. The Senate was the 
permanent Council of State, and was the real ad- 
ministrator of the 'Empire. The Senate had the 
control of the treasury, conducted the public policy, 
appointed from its own ranks the governors of the 
provinces. It was patrician in sentiment, but not 
necessarily patrician in composition. The mem- 
bers of it had virtually been elected for life by the 
people, and were almost entirely those who had 
been quaestors, aediles, praetors or consuls; and 
these offices had been long open to the plebeians. 
It was an artistocracy, in theory a real one, but 
tending to become, as civilization went forward, an 
aristocracy of the rich. 

How the Senatorial privileges affected the man- 
agement of the provinces will be seen more par- 
ticularly as we go on. It is enough at present to 
say that the nobles and great commoners of Rome 
rapidly found themselves in possession of revenues 
which their fathers could not have imagined in their 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 63 

dreams, and money in the stage of progress at 
which Rome had arrived was convertible into 
power. 

THE PLUNDER OF THE PROVINCES. 

To obtain a province was the first ambition of a 
Roman noble. The road to it lay through the prae- 
torship and the consulship; these offices, therefore, 
became the prizes of the State; and, being in the 
gift of the people, they were sought after by means 
which demoralized alike the givers and the receiv- 
ers. The elections were managed by clubs and co- 
teries; and, except on occasions of national danger 
or political excitement, those who spent most freely 
were most certain of success. 

Under these conditions the chief powers in the 
Commonwealth necessarily centered in the rich. 
There was no longer an aristocracy of birth, still 
less of virtue. 

The patrician families had the start in the race. 
Great names and great possessions came to them by 
inheritance. But the door of promotion was open 
to all who had the golden key. 

The great commoners bought their way into the 
magistracies. From the magistracies they passed 
into the Senate ; and the Roman Senator, though in 
Rome itself and in free debate among his colleagues 
he was handled as an ordinary man, when he trav- 
elled had the honors of a sovereign. 

The proud privilege of Roman citizenship was 
still jealously reserved to Rome itself and to a few 
favored towns and colonies; and a mere subject 
could maintain no rights against a member of the 
haughty oligarchy which controlled the civilized 
world. Such, generally, the Roman Republic had 
become, or was tending to become, in the years 
which followed the fall of Carthage, B. C. 146. 



64 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

Public spirit in the masses was dead or sleeping; 
the Commonwealth was a plutocracy. The free 
forms of the Constitution were themselves the in- 
struments of corruption. 

Senator Teller said in reference to trusts: 
"If the Sherman law were enforced as it ought to 
be there would not be the cry there is now against 
trusts. If a law should be enacted providing that 
the officers of any trust or combination should be 
imprisoned for contributing to the fund of any po- 
litical party a stop would soon be put to an alliance 
between trusts and politics. 

THE ARMY. 

Gen. Greely, chief of the signal service of the 
army, spoke of the United States army as a military 
organization at the annual banquet of the Worces- 
ter Board of Trade May 2, 1900. He declared that 
the army was a political organization, and that it 
had not advanced during a period of fifty years. 
If the system, which was now imperfect, was to be 
improved in future years, it would be at the cost 
of tens of thousands of lives and millions in treas- 
ure. 

He declared that the same process of weeding out 
incompetents that obtained in commercial and in- 
dustrial life should obtain in the army. Until this 
was done the United States army would be the 
weak and imperfect organization that it was today 
and had been for half a century. 

The soldier, General Greely declared, represent- 
ed the manhood and integrity of military organiza- 
tion, and the officers the political machine. If 
every incompetent officer in the army was dis- 
charged from the service it would have a tremen- 
dous effect, and make the army of the United 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 65 

States approach the model of the German army of 
1 today, which, of all national military organizations, 
was the nearest perfect. 

General Greely said that the Quartermaster's De- 
partment of the army contained many incompetent 
men, some of whom were a disgrace to the country. 
It was owing to the imperfect system obtaining at 
the outbreak of hostilities with Spain that the re- 
sources of the nation had been taxed to the utmost 
to move an army of 20,000 men to Cuba. 

As showing that the whole system was yet imper- 
fect, the speaker referred to the fact that at the close 
of the war with Spain, and in the present in the 
Philippines signal service, men have been obliged 
to go without rations for a period of ten days. 

THE UNITED STATES MAIL. 

On the contrary, the mail service of the United 
States is a typical, burdensome and irresponsible 
monopoly of the most offensive description. Be- 
yond appointing a host of officials to collect, pouch, 
dispatch, receive and distribute the letters, papers 
and parcels, the Government has nothing whatever 
to do with their transmission. They are conveyed 
by railroads, steamboats, stage coaches and private 
contractors at extortionate rates, some trains get- 
ting the entire cost of maintenance and operation 
from their receipts from the Post Office. The Gov- 
ernment pays an average of eight cents a pound for 
an average haul of four and one-half miles, while 
the express companies carry merchandise from New 
York to Chicago, a thousand miles, for $3 per hun- 
dred pounds, and some transcontinental lines will 
take goods from New Orleans to San Francisco for 
8-10 of one cent the pound, while Government, -by 
law, compels the citizens to pay for carrying their 
letters at the rate of $610 the ton. As a matter of 



66 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

fact, it is much nearer $1,000 the ton, for very few 
letters weigh the ounce which may be taken for two 
cents postage. 

And not only so, but the Government renounces 
all liability for the safe delivery of the property 
which it compels the citizen to intrust to its charge, 
except to the extent of $10, when it is registered. — 
John J. Ingalls. 

AN ILLUSTRATION. 

The Postmaster-General was called on May 26, 
1900, to investigate the. following specific charges: 

The funds of the Washington City Post Office 
have been improperly disbursed for over two years, 
the irregularities for the quarter ending September 
30, 1898, amounting to $20,000 to $30,000, accord- 
ing to an expert's report to Comptroller Tracewell. 

Numerous favorites have been carried on two, 
and even three, payrolls at the same time at the 
Washington City Post Office and at other post 
offices in the country. Oliver H. Smith of In- 
diana, now superintendent in the local service, was 
for about a year simultaneously auditor of local 
postal stations, laborer, and painter of street letter- 
boxes. He drew three salaries. Nathan Baker of 
Indiana succeeded to Mr. Smith's emoluments. 

MANY ON STUFFED PAYROLL. 

Six women have long been carried on the rolls of 
the city post office as cleaners at $600 a year, per- 
forming no work whatever, and being paid on sep- 
arate vouchers. Four men were for many months 
paid at the local post office apparently to investigate 
claims of letter carriers, all the positions being sine- 
cures. 

John E. Jones, a newspaper reporter, was carried 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 67 

for many months as physician to the Washington 
City Post Office at $1,700 a year. 

Traveling expenses of department officials who 
were not on public business, trips for private citi- 
zens only nominally connected with the govern- 
ment service, have been paid to the extent of tens 
of thousands of dollars out of funds strictly belong- 
ing to the Washington Post Office and out of the 
military postal fund. 

Postmaster Merritt is exonerated from any re- 
sponsibility, as it is said he had no control over 
matters. A long list of witnesses is recommended 
to the Postmaster-General to aid in his investiga- 
tion. It includes Chief Inspector Cochran of the 
Post Office Department, Fourth Assistant Bristow, 
George W. Beavers, chief of the salary and allow- 
ance division, and the files of the Comptroller of 
the Treasury. 

HOW MARK HANNA BECAME SENATOR 

AND WHY THE ADMINISTRATION IS 

SO EASY ON RATHBONE OF 

THE CUBA STEALS. 

Senate report No. 1,859, third session, Fifty-fifth 
Congress, contains some official information that 
may show why Major E. G. Rathbone, Director- 
General of Posts in Cuba, is protected, if it shall 
prove that some hidden influence saves him from 
prosecution. Senate report No. 1,859 nas to do 
with the investigation of the charge of bribery in 
connection with the election of Marcus A. Hanna of 
Ohio to the United States Senate. The report con- 
tains, among other things, the report of the select 
committee of the Ohio State Senate which investi- 
gated the charge. The findings of the committee 
are summarized in the report as follows : 



68 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

"The evidence taken by your committee in its 
judgment proves four main facts: 

"i. That on or about January 9, 1898, an attempt 
was made to bribe John C. Otis, a member of the 
house of representatives of the present General As- 
sembly of the State of Ohio, to vote for Marcus A. 
Hanna for United States Senator. 

"2. That Henry H. Boyce was the principal of- 
fender in the commission of that crime. 

"3. That Major E. G. Rathbone and Major 
Charles F. Dick were agents of Marcus A. Hanna, 
and procured, aided, and abetted Henry H. Boyce 
to commit that crime. 

"4. That H. H. Hollenbeck aided Henry H. 
Boyce in committing that crime." 

COLONIAL PILLAGE UNDER WAY. 

And now it appears that the looting of Cuba is 
not confined to a few officers of the army that have 
been ordered to special service there. It is now 
reported that the rascality pervades the post office 
business of the island, which has been under the 
control of the War Department. The director, 
Rathbone, who is at the head of the system, is said 
to be getting $16,000 a year from the Government 
in regular salary and allowances, besides what he 
picks up on the side. The deficit for the Cuban 
post office system for the first six months, ending 
June 30, 1899, was $ II 4> I 83, and the deficit for the 
year ending June 30, 1900, is estimated to go over 
$200,000. This is not surprising when a special 
agent or inspector in Cuba looks after only an aver- 
age of fifteen offices, while in the United States one 
looks after 300 offices. Other things are on a like 
scale of extravagance. 

It is evident that the scheme of colonial pillage 
is already under way and that the policy of benevo- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 69 

lent assimilation assimilates money and portable 
valuables first. We are not only lifting the Cubans 
up, but also holding them up. — Indianapolis Senti- 
nel. 

ANOTHER CUBAN SCANDAL. 

Another Cuban scandal is set forth in outline by 
the New York Herald. This relates to the building 
By the War Department of the six-mile railroad 
known as the Trisconia, which connects the town 
of that name with the roads leading into Havana 
from the east. It was built as a military necessity, 
according to War Department explanations, in or- 
der that the troops could be transported to the in- 
terior of Cuba without having to pass through Ha- 
vana. But a curious fact about this explanation 
is that the war was over and the troops were being 
moved out of Cuba before it was hardly begun, and 
that the parading of troops through Havana has 
been the practice of commanding officers, notwith- 
standing the existence of the road. It cost $342,- 
611, and engineers say that it ought not to have cost 
more than $10,000 a mile, or between $60,000 and 
$70,000. — Springfield Republican. 

THE COST OF CUBAN GOVERNMENT. 

Senator Bacon's remarks just published in the 
Record on the cost of carrying on the government 
of Cuba are'very interesting and suggestive. 

In round numbers, he says, the Cuban receipts 
for 1899 amounted to $16,000,000 and the expendi- 
tures to $14,000,000. Deducting the cost of the 
municipalities, $1,239,000, and treating the items 
of expenditures for justice and public instruction, 
which are lumped, $790,000, as for education alone, 
and deducting this also and the postal expenses, 



70 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

Mr. Bacon makes the expenditure for the current 
cost of governing the island about $11,000,000. 

He compares this with the expenditures of sev- 
eral of the States. These States are all but one or 
two much larger in population than Cuba, and all 
have much more highly organized governments. 
The result of the comparison is shown in the fol- 
lowing table of the current annual expenditures for 
Cuba and the States named: 

Cuba $11,000,000 

STATES. 

Georgia $ 872,000 

Missouri 1,707,137 

Massachusetts 3,500,000 

Indiana 2,980,000 

Arkansas 550,000 

Minnesota 4,650,000 

Mississippi 749,000 

Kentucky 2,738,000 

Tennessee 2,580,000 

Michigan 3,584,000 

The government of each one of these States 
ought seemingly to cost more than our temporary 
and incomplete government of Cuba. And yet 
Cuba costs from four times to twenty times as much 
as States having larger populations and more com- 
plete governments. Deducting also $1,270,000 ex- 
pended in Cuba for barracks and quarters which Mr. 
Bacon should have done, and $3,810,000 for sanita- 
tion and customs service, the annual current ex- 
penses of Cuba amount to about $6,000,000. If 
we add to the table the cost of education, the ex- 
penditures of Cuba exceed by from $1,000,000 to 
about $4,000,000 those of any of the State govern- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 7 l 

ments mentioned except that of Massachusetts, 
which expends $5,500,000 a year for education. — 
New York World. 

MORE THAN $24,000,000 A YEAR HANDLED 
BY TRUST GO. IN CUBA ALONE. 

Estimated amount of funds handled annually by 
the North American Trust Company as the fiscal 
agent of the United States in Cuba: 

RECEIPTS OF THE ISLAND. 

From customs .$15,012,100.10 

From postal 250,025.85 

From internal revenue 760,880.33 

From miscellaneous 293,584.51 

Total island receipts $16,316,590.79 

MAINTENANCE OF THE ARMY. 

Estimated from official reports : 

Pay of United States troops $ 2,500,000.00 

Subsistence of army 800,000.00 

Medical departments 100,000.00 

Barracks and quarters 1,000,000.00 

Quartermasters' supplies 800,000.00' 

Clothing, etc 800,000.00 

Contingent and other expenses ..... 2,000,000.00 

Total U. S. Government money 8,000,000.00 

Total receipts 16,316,590.79 

Grand total $24,316,590.79 

Estimated profits of North American Trust Com- 
pany on Cuban business alone, $1,320,000. 
Total capitalization, $2,000,000. 



72 WHAT'S THE MATTER 



A SHORT STORY IN FIGURES. 

The ordinary annual expenditures of the Gov- 
ernment averaged in President Harrison's term 
$361,291,323. 

They averaged in President Cleveland's second 
term $360,418,546. 

They have averaged in President McKinley's 
term $514,480,254. 

The cost of running the Government is thus seen 
to have been increased by nearly $154,000,000 a 
year ever since Mr. McKinley was inaugurated. 
And this is not accounted for by the extraordinary 
disbursements of the war, which are not included 
in these "ordinary expenditures." 

The outlay for war is a separate matter, and it 
accounts for the increase of the public debt by 
$200,000,000 since Mr. McKinley's inauguration. 

The financial record of the Administration may 
therefore be summed up in a sentence. It has 
added nearly $13,000,000 a month to the regular 
running expenses of the Government and added 
$1.79 per capita to the national burden of debt. — 
New York World. 

THE PORTO RICANS MUST PAY. 

The new governor of Porto Rico is to receive 
$8,000 a year, which is as much as a justice of the 
United States Supreme Court receives, as much as 
the Vice-President of the United States receives, 
$5,500 a year more than Nebraska's Governor re- 
ceives. Porto Rico has about as many inhabitants 
as Nebraska. They must support a clique of of- 
ficeholders who cost more than the administration 
of any State in the Union. The Porto Ricans have 
to pay dearly for the privilege of being 15 per cent 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 73 

American and 85 per cent foreigners. — Omaha 
World-Herald. 

A NEW BRAND OF FREEDOM FOR PUER- 
TO RICO. 

One of the incidents that will last in American 
history was the treatment of Puerto Rico by the 
present Congress. Spain allowed the 800,000 peo- 
ple of this island free trade, manhood suffrage, 
sixteen full deputies and four senators to the Cortez 
at Madrid, and twelve representatives in the local 
municipal assemblies. President McKinley in his 
message to the Fifty-sixth Congress said: "Our 
plain duty is to abolish all custom tariffs between 
the United States and Puerto Rico and give her 
products free access to our markets." On January 
8 last General Davis, the Governor-General of 
Puerto Rico, appeared before a committee of the 
House of Representatives. 

"With free trade with the United States will the 
people of Puerto Rico be able to work out their 
salvation?" asked Mr. Cannon, of Illinois. 

"Quite able to support themselves," he replied, 
"and besides, to contribute much to the wealth of 
the United States whenever the island is put upon 
a sound basis." 

Three weeks after this there was an unexpected 
change. A tariff was proposed, and then followed 
those well-remembered developments which ended 
in the driving through both houses of Congress of 
a new measure. Some of the more independent 
members, both of the House and the Senate, re- 
belled, but the party organization was too strong 
for the majority. The bill passed the Senate by a 
vote of 40 to 31-. This measure puts over Puerto 
Rico a governor, gives the Puerto Ricans the 
smaller part of a legislative assembly and. keeps in 



74 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

American hands the real authority. Even if this 
legislative assembly passes laws they must be sub- 
ject to the revision of the Congress of the United 
States. Its judges are appointed by the President 
of the United States. It does not even allow Puer- 
to Ricans to send a non-voting delegate to Con- 
gress, but creates a resident commissioner of Puerto 
Rico to represent the colony in Washington. 

And in addition to all that it imposes a 15 per cent 
tariff on Puerto Rican trade. 

The nation was humiliated and aroused to pro- 
test by this Puerto Rican incident. Almost the en- 
tire press of the country declared its opposition, 
and one of the extraordinary facts was that some 
of the staid scientific journals which never touched 
politics before in all their careers could not resist 
the temptation to express themselves. Almost every 
word that came from the pulpit or the rostrum out- 
side of Congress was a protest against the violation 
of the given promise of the nation. 

The argument for the bill was one of expediency 
— that it was better to raise the necessary revenues 
in this indirect way, and that in any event every 
penny would be devoted to Puerto Rico. Beyond 
all this was the broader fact that if the United States 
Government should give free trade to Puerto Rico 
it would have to do the same to the Philippines, and . 
thus open the gates for the Eastern invasion of 
cheap products and cheap labor. But at the same 
time the fact remains to-day that the 800,000 Puerto 
Ricans, like the two million Americans one hun- 
dred and twenty-five years ago, are enjoying the 
privileges and pleasures of taxation without repre- 
sentation. — Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post. 

Republican Senator Wellington of Maryland 
said : 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 75 

'This country, so far as its government is con- 
cerned, has yielded to British blandishments and 
is under the sway of British influence. England 
dares not attack us by force, and realizing this, is 
gaining points against us by diplomacy. So it was 
during the American-Spanish war that England 
professed herself our friend after we had broken the 
power of Spain. 

"That was the beginning of an alliance conceived 
in darkness and carried out in iniquity. There has 
been between the two governments a secret under- 
standing — although as yet no open alliance — and a 
surrender of American interests to Great Britain. 

"Despite the desire of a vast majority of our peo- 
ple that we should extend our sympathy and good 
offices to the Boers, the diplomacy of Great Britain 
now binds the hands of our country." 

WHAT IMPERIALISM WOULD DO FOR 
FREE SPEECH. 

Henry Wade Rogers has been forced to leave 
the presidency of Northwestern University because 
the American people, as a whole, refuse to tolerate 
men who tamper with treason. 

When Henry Wade Rogers, on April 30, 1899, 
presided over and addressed the copperheads as- 
sembled in Central Music Hall, his own words and 
acts exposed a radical defect in his character. 
When he denied the United States possessed the 
Philippines, declared our rule unrightful, and pro- 
claimed Aguinaldo not a rebel, his words were false 
in fact and treasonable in suggestion. 

Yet, wrong as were his words, Dr. Rogers' acts 
were much worse. When his audience received his 
perfunctory expression of confidence in the Presi- 
dent with hisses and jeers, a self-respecting speaker 
would have left the hall, but Dr. Rogers remained. 



7& WHAT'S THE MATTER 

Northwestern University is to be congratulated 
upon its course. Upon great national questions of 
citizenship Dr. Rogers has been weighed in the bal- 
ance and found wanting. His glaring unfitness 
for his place was made manifest. His continuance 
in it would have been an insult to the loyal people 
whose money and zeal have made Northwestern 
what it is. He is now relegated to the obscurity 
which he has earned. — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

NOT THE PARTY OF LINCOLN. 

The platform claims that the Republican party 
under McKinley's guidance is actuated by the same 
inspiration and motives that it drew from the states- 
manship and example of Lincoln. 

Lincoln waged war to free the slaves; McKinley 
to rivet the shackles upon human beings. Lincoln 
insisted on equality before the law of every man 
under the flag. McKinley authorizes slavery and 
polygamy in the Stilus, imposes a discriminating 
and onerous tax upon Porto Ricans without their 
consent and carries on a war of criminal aggres- 
sion against the inhabitants of Asiatic islands to 
force upon them a government they do not want 
and to deprive them of the right of governing 
themselves. 

- All parallels between Lincoln and McKinley in 
which the latter is likened to the former, as far as 
his administration acts go, is a profanation, which 
nearly approaches sacrilege. The Republican 
party of today has in it nothing left of the party 
that triumphed under Lincoln except the name. — 
Kansas City Times. 

DARE NOT SHOW SYMPATHY. 

Time was when a resolution expressing sympathy 
for a struggling people would be received with 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 77 

cheers in a Republican convention and passed with- 
out a dissenting vote. Four years ago a resolution 
of sympathy with the Cubans was cheered to the 
echo by Republican conventions, and time and 
again Republican conventions, state and national, 
have declared sympathy with "all oppressed peoples 
struggling for their rights." But the Republican 
party has changed mightily during recent years. 
Today a resolution of sympathy with a people strug- 
gling for their rights is greeted with hisses instead 
of applause in a Republican convention. 

In the Illinois Republican convention Delegate 
Miles Kehoe introduced a resolution of sympathy 
with the brave Boers who are fighting to maintain 
their little republic, and the resolution was greeted 
with a storm of hisses. 

How do old-time Republicans who learned at the 
feet of Lincoln, Grant, Seward and Blaine like it? — 
Omaha World-Herald. 

WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS. 

What can Secretary Root mean in saying that 
"no intelligent man can read the signs of the times 
to-day 'and not realize that before many years the 
American people will be forced either to abandon 
the Monroe doctrine or else fight for it?" 

The Monroe doctrine, as first declared, had two 
postulates, each logically complementary of the 
other: 

(i) The exclusion of European intervention in 
American affairs. 

(2) The abstention of America from intervention 
in European affairs. 

That was Monroe's Monroe doctrine. No war 
threatens us if we closely adhere to it. But Mc- 
Kinley's Monroe doctrine is another matter. That 
plainly contemplates American armed intervention 



7§ WHAT'S THE MATTER" 

in the affairs of the other hemisphere, coupled with 
a continued refusal to allow European armed inter- 
vention in this hemisphere. 

And that way lies trouble. We cannot expect to 
use the Monroe doctrine as a bludgeon for "criminal 
aggression" on the European side of the world, 
and at the same time as a barrier against European 
aggression on the American side of the world. 

Secretary Root's apprehension of a rapidly ap- 
proaching war must be founded on a belief that 
Monroe's Monroe doctrine is dead, and that Mc- 
Kinley's Monroe doctrine has taken its olace. — 
New York World. 

THE DOLLAR SIDE. 

The great "commercial value" of the Philippines 
is illustrated by the official figures of the exports 
to those islands for the ten months ending with 
April. The total value was $2,132,944. This is 
about what one big ship takes from New York to 
Europe every week. Of this little total $441,550 
was in horses and mules for our own army, $230,000 
in fodder for them, $370,000 in beer and $97,000 in 
whiskey — all for our soldiers. Is not this a won- 
derful trade, when the cost of maintaining the army 
there alone is $50,000,000 a year? 

DRINK. 

An analysis of our annual drink bill gives the 
following items : 

Alcoholic beverages $ 973,580,080 

Coffee 134.695.154 

Tea 33»6i3,588 

Cocoa 5,000,000 

Total $1,146,897,822 

Total for 1898 1,177,661,366 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 79 

COUNTY CORRUPTION. 

Over in the county board one man is drawing 
$6,000 a year and fourteen others are drawing 
$4,000 each for filling a lot of useless offices in a 
wholly discreditable manner. — Chicago Times- 
Herald. 

Washington, May 13. — Senator Chandler was 
asked by The World correspondent to-day for fur- 
ther explanation of his charges in the Senate yes- 
terday that the Harvey armor patent is a fraud 
and that Krupp armor is without superior merit. 
He gave the story of the Harvey patent as fol- 
lows : . N 

"Mr. Harvey nine years ago offered some espe- 
cially hardened tool steel to Captain Folger, then an 
ordnance officer of the navy, who suggested that 
he experiment in applying the hardening process to 
armor. 

"All that Mr. Harvey did at his own expense 
was to get a little plate three feet square and four 
inches thick, and he brought it in contact with char- 
coal fire at Newark, N. J. He submitted the,result 
to Commander Folger, who thereupon, at the ex- 
pense of the Navy Department, went on with the 
experiment. 

"He ordered from the Creusot works a plate 6 
feet by & feet by 10 1-2" inches and down here at the 
Navy Yard he went on and supercarburized the 
plate, Mr. Harvey being present and giving direc- 
tions. 

"Then Mr. Harvey applied for a patent. This 
was in April, 1891. The claim was disallowed. It 
was after that repeatedly disallowed. Mr. Eugene 
A. Byrnes, the examiner, rejected it. A second re- 
jection was made on June 11, 1891, and on June 20, 



80 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

1892, Secretary Tracy wrote a letter to the Patent 
Office, asking to have the Harvey patent expedited. 
That expedition took place, and at last the two ex- 
aminers-in-chief, R. L. B. Clarke and S. W. Stock- 
ing, on appeal from the primary examiner, allowed 
the patent, which was issued September 29, 1891. 

"So the monopoly had been created. Any one 
can judge whether it was created by Mr. Harvey or 
by Commander Folger. Among the reasons given 
by the Patent Office for rejecting the patent was 
the assertion that there is no invention adding to 
the carburizing process disclosed by Harvey and 
McDonald, the well-known step of hardening by 
chilling employed by Sperry & Howell." 

Taking up the subject of Krupp armor, Mr. 
Chandler said that when Congress fixed the maxi- 
mum price for armor at $300 the combined compa- 
nies of the world found it necessary to resort to 
some new method of making the plate in order to 
avoid coming down in price of their product. 

"The companies then invented this new Krupp 
armor," added the Senator, "which is nothing in 
the world but an armor into the face of which car- 
bon is driven two or three times as far as it is into 
the face of Harvey armor. The patents, if there are 
any, we know nothing about. The so-called secret 
is no secret at all." 

SAVINGS FROM PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF 
THE NATION'S RAILROADS. 

Savings. In Millions. 

1. By abolishing 599 presidents, with their 

staffs (one would do) 25 

2. By abolishing the high-priced managers and 
their staffs 4, 

3. By abolishing attorneys and legal expenses. 12 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 8l 

Savings. In Millions. 

4. By abolishing merely competitive offices, 

solicitors, etc 12 

5. By abolishing 5-7 of the advertising account, 

which is incurred for competitive pur- 
poses 5 

6. By abolishing the traffic associations which 

are employed to adjust matters between 
competing roads 4 

7. By exclusive use of the shortest routes 25 

8. By consolidation of working depots, offices, 

and staffs 20 

9. By uniformity of rail, cars, machinery, etc., 

cheapening their manufacture; by avoid- 
ing freight blockades, return of ''empties" 
belonging to other roads, clerkage to 
keep account of foreign cars and adjust 
division of earnings among the roads ; by 
making simple, easily understood tariffs, 
saving the time and labor of clerks and the 
public; by all the numberless little econo- 
mies of a vast corporation under a single 
management, and no competitive warfare 
to waste its energies 15 

10. By avoiding strikes and developing a better 

spirit among the employes 10 

11. By abolishing the corruption fund for influ- 

encing legislation, etc 30 

12. By abolishing the pass evil 30 

13. By abolishing unjust rebates and commis- 

sions 50 

14. By having no rent or interest to pay 286 

15. By having no dividends to pay 82 

16. By putting surplus in the people's treasury. 52 

Total savings by public ownership of rail- 
ways in a year 662 



82 WHAT'S THE MATTER 



CIVIL SERVICE. 

The civil-service plank in the Republican plat- 
form takes first prize for case-hardened cheek. It 
commends the party for ''maintaining the efficiency 
of the civil service," in face of the fact that Presi- 
dent McKinley has thrown 10,000 classified places 
to the spoilsmen, and says: "The Administration 
has acted wisely in its effort to secure for public 
service in Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philip- 
pine Islands only those whose fitness has been 
determined by training and experience." And 
this within a month of the Neely embezzlement 
and the Rathbone crookedness! The author of 
that plank should confine his talents to poker. His 
bluffs are too magnificent for politics. 

WAGES AND THE COST OF LIVING. 

The general price level rose 36 per cent between 
June 30, 1897, and January 1, 1900. Wages did 
not rise by more than from 10 to 20 per cent, where 
they rose at all. Therefore real wages have every- 
where declined. 

Formerly there was a chance of preserving some 
sort of proportion between prices and wages, but 
the development of monopolies during the McKin- 
ley administration has prevented the diffusion of the 
benefits of rising prices, and concentrated them al- 
most entirely in the hands of the trusts. Before 
free competition was extinguished a wave of in- 
creasing prices used to touch its highest point in 
agricultural products. Now it is the things con- 
trolled by trusts that go to the top, while agricul- 
tural products lag near the bottom of the ascend- 
ing movement. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 83 



MR. HANNA'S CONVENTION. 

The Republican National Convention that began 
its sessions at Philadelphia June 19 was as remark- 
able in its way as the one that met at the same place 
forty-four years before. This was the first Nation- 
al Convention in American history that had had no 
mind of its own. It marked the culmination of the 
boss system. 

In 1896 bosses were familiar figures in State and 
municipal politics, but none of them had ever con- 
trolled a National Convention of either party. 
Such a body was still the highest authority known 
in our politics. The Republican Convention met 
at St. Louis, supposing itself still to be an independ- 
ent deliberative assembly like its predecessors. It 
found itself in the presence of that new and por- 
tentous figure, the National Boss. After a brief 
and one-sided contest Mr. Reed and the other ad- 
herents of the old methods succumbed. From that 
time the Republican party ceased to be a self-gov- 
erning organization. 

DANGERS WHICH CONFRONT THE 
UNITED STATES. 

(By David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stan- 
ford Jr. University.) 

There are four enemies to the growth and de- 
velopment of a democracy — four enemies that have 
ever stood in the path of man. These are aristoc- 
racy, militarism, slavery, and imperialism. There 
are various other enemies, but those are the four 
arch enemies in a political sense. They all spring 
out of the idea that man belongs not to himself, but 
that he belongs, body and soul, to the country 
which owns him, and that the country itself is the 



84 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

administration of that country's affairs. These 
four enemies, in a dangerous garb, confront the 
United States today. 

These four stand together, will stand together. 
Wherever there is one the other is Aristocracy, 
slavery, militarism and imperialism. They reach 
each other's hand. They all have their fair side. 
They are defended sometimes at the fireside. 
Slavery was discussed and defended from many 
a pulpit in New England. Aristocracy has its fair 
side. You can find it pictured and what it is in 
many British novels. 

The foundation of quality is aristocracy; the 
foundation of our liberty is rebellion against it — 
the thing that we came here for. 

There is a fair side of slavery and a fair side of 
militarism. How clean the streets can be kept un- 
der military discipline and how free from noise. 
How easily people can be sent to bed at dark if it 
be desired; how easily cock-fighting can be sup- 
pressed. 

There is a fair side of imperialism. You will find 
that in many places nine-tenths of the people be- 
lieve it is a good thing for the world. Maybe it is, 
but when we come to read history from the one 
side to the other we will find that the British peo- 
ple have been debauched by their course in India, 
and that the Hindoos have been cursed; you will 
find that the English people have been turned 
from being a strong, freedom-loving people. You 
will find, also, that the heart's blood has gone out of 
Great Britain, as it has gone out of all countries 
where they have indulged in these constant wars. 

We know how Napoleon depopulated France by 
his wars. We know of the murders of the nobility, 
the murders of the peasantry, and the result in the 
France of today. In 1630, when the Philippine 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 85 

question was a burning one in Spain, La Puente, 
an Augustine friar, expressed his opinion of the 
whole thing when he said: "Against the gain of 
redeemed souls I place the cost in the loss of ar- 
madas and of soldiers and of friars sent to the Phil- 
ippines, and these I count the chief loss, that, while 
mines give silver and forests give lumber, only 
Spain gives Spaniards, and she shall give so many 
of them that some day she shall be left childless and 
forced to bring u*p strangers' children instead of her 
own." 

Do we think that we fought against Spain? 
Spain died long ago. Spain is only a shell. 

Another Spanish writer followed in these sublime 
and terrible words: "This is Castile. She makes 
men and wastes them." 

This heresy of imperialism is the most dangerous 
that has arisen since the heresy of secession, and it 
must be fought as vigorously as the heresy of seces- 
sion. If we admit as citizens "any number of mil- 
lions of people that are not ready for liberty, if we 
admit them with all the degradation which they 
must bring into our politics, we must take the con- 
sequences. 

It is better that we should be just and faithful to 
our own principle and to the principles of God, and 
that we should in our .laws be no respecters of per- 
sons, because if, in our laws, we are respecters of 
persons, we must go the way of empire, as all em- 
pire has gone. 

Our danger is illustrated already in Porto Rico. 
The tariff discussion in Porto Rico violently agi- 
tated the American people, because they instinct- 
ively felt it was simply the introduction of the thin 
edge of the wedge of imperialism, the beginning of - 
the contest between the American government and 
the American people. It is the introduction of the 



86 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

principle that Congress, which is a creature of the 
constitution, and the President, who is a creature of 
the constitution, have certain powers that have been 
delegated by the people that are not given by the 
constitution, powers claimed to come just as the 
powers of all despots come, from the hands of Prov- 
idence. 

The best way in which the growth of any man or 
nation has ever been promoted has been through 
self-government, democratically looking after its 
own affairs. We do not expect that self-govern- 
ment will always be good government. It would 
be unfortunate if it were, because men learn not by 
their success but by mistakes. Self-government 
will be good government after a long time. But 
it is not always as good a government on the sur- 
face as it might be in a despotism. 

It has been said our treatment of Porto Rico was 
odious. Our treatment is but the treatment of any 
colony, and what the treatment of any colony must 
be that is dependent 'upon other men for its gov- 
ernment. Our treatment of Alaska has been a 
shame from beginning to end. It must be, and al- 
ways will be to the end. Our treatment of Cuba, 
good as it seems in some respects, has been a shame, 
and before we get through with it we shall see. 
Remember, it is not ended yet. 

Our treatment of the Philippines is unspeakable. 
Our treatment of the Indians has not been a cen- 
tury of honor. As soon as the voice of the Indian 
is heard, as soon as he has a vote, then we have an 
entirely different attitude. — New York Journal. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 87 



PLATFORM ADOPTED AT KANSAS CITY. 



We, the representatives of the Democratic party 
of the United States, assembled in national conven- 
tion on the anniversary of the adoption of the Dec- 
laration of Independence, do reaffirm our faith in 
that immortal proclamation of the inalienable rights 
of man, and our allegiance to the constitution 
framed in harmony therewith by the fathers of the 
republic. We hold with the United States Su- 
preme Court that the Declaration of Independence 
is the spirit of our government, of which the con- 
stitution is the form and letter. 

We declare again that all governments instituted 
among men derive their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed; that any government not 
based upon the consent of the governed is a tyran- 
ny ; and that to impose upon any people a govern- 
ment of force is to substitute the methods of 
imperialism for those of a republic. 

We hold that the constitution follows the flag, 
and denounce the doctrine, that an Executive or 
Congress, deriving their existence and their powers 
from the constitution, can exercise lawful authority 
beyond it or in violation of it. 

We assert that no nation can long endure half 
republic and half empire, and we warn the American 
people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly 
and inevitably to despotism at home. 

Believing in these fundamental principles, we 
denounce the Porto Rico law, enacted by a Repub- 
lican Congress against the protest and opposition 
of the Democratic minority, as a bold and open 
violation of the nation's organic law and a flagrant 
breach of the national good faith. It imposes upon 



88 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

the people of Porto Rico a government without 
their consent and taxation without representation. 

It dishonors the American people by repudiating 
•a solemn pledge made in their behalf by the com- 
manding General of our army, which the Porto 
Ricans welcomed to a peaceful and unresisted occu- 
pation of their land. It doomed to poverty and dis- 
tress a people whose helplessness appeals with 
peculiar force to our justice and magnanimity. 

In this, the first act of its imperialistic program, 
the Republican party seeks to commit the United 
States to a colonial policy inconsistent with Repub- 
lican institutions and condemned by the Supreme 
Court in numerous decisions. 

We demand the prompt and honest fulfillment of 
our pledge to the Cuban people and the world that 
the United States has no disposition nor intention 
to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over 
the Island of Cuba, except for its pacification. The 
war ended nearly two years ago, profound peace 
reigns over all the island, and still the administra- 
tion keeps the government of the island from its 
people while Republican carpet bag officials plun- 
der its revenues and exploit the colonial theory to 
the disgrace of the American people. 

We condemn and denounce the Philippine policy 
of the present administration. It has involved the 
republic in unnecessary war, sacrificed the lives of 
many of our noblest sons, and placed the United 
States, previously known and applauded through- 
out the world as the champion of freedom, in the 
false and un-American position of crushing with 
military force the efforts of our former allies to 
achieve liberty and self-government. 

The Filipinos cannot be citizens without endan- 
gering our civilization; they cannot be subjects 
without imperiling our form of government, and as 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 89 

we are not willing to surrender our civilization or 
to convert the republic into an empire, we favor 
an immediate declaration of the nation's purpose to 
give to the Filipinos, first, a stable form of govern- 
ment^ second, independence, and, third, protection 
from outside interference, such as has been given 
for nearly a century to the republics of Central and 
South America. 

The greedy commercialism which dictated the 
Philippine policy of the Republican administra- 
tion attempts to justify it with the plea that it will 
pay, but even this sordid and unworthy plea fails 
when brought to the test of facts. The war of crim- 
inal aggression against the Filipinos, entailing an 
annual expense of many millions, has already cost 
more than any possible profit that could accrue 
from the entire Philippine trade for years to come. 

Furthermore, when trade is extended at the ex- 
pense of liberty, the price is always too high. 

We are not opposed to territorial expansion when 
it takes in desirable territory which can be erected 
into States in the Union and whose people are will- 
ing and fit to become American citizens. We favor 
trade expansion by every peaceful and legitimate 
means. But we^are unalterably opposed to the 
seizing or purchasing of distant islands to be gov- 
erned outside the constitution and whose people 
can never become citizens. 

We are in favor of extending the republic's in- 
fluence among the nations, but believe that influ- 
ence should be extended, not by force and violence, 
but through the persuasive power of a high and 
honorable example. 

The importance of other questions now pending 
before the American people is in no wise dimin- 
ished, and the Democratic party takes no backward 
step from its position on them, but the burning 



90 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

issue of imperialism growing out of the Spanish 
war involves the very existence of the republic and 
the destruction of our free institutions. We regard 
it as the paramount issue of the campaign. 

The declaration in the Republican platform 
adopted at the Philadelphia convention held in 
June, 1900, that the Republican party "steadfastly 
adheres to the policy announced in the Monroe 
doctrine" is manifestly insincere and deceptive. 
This profession is contradicted by the avowed pol- 
icy of that party in opposition to the spirit of the 
Monroe doctrine to acquire and hold sovereignty 
Over large areas of territory and large numbers of 
people in the eastern hemisphere. 

We insist on the strict maintenance of the Mon- 
roe doctrine and in all its integrity, both in letter 
and in spirit, as necessary to prevent the extension 
of European authority on this continent, and as es- 
sential to our supremacy in American affairs. At 
the same time we declare that no American people 
shall ever be held by force in unwilling subjection 
to European authority. 

We oppose militarism. It means conquest abroad 
and intimidation and oppression at home. It means 
the strong arm which has ever been fatal to free 
institutions. It is what millions of our citizens have 
fled from in Europe. It will impose upon our peace- 
loving people a large standing army and unneces- 
sary burden of taxation and a constant menace to 
their liberties. A small standing army and a well 
disciplined State militia are amply sufficient in time 
of peace. 

This republic has no place for a vast_ military 
service and conscription. When the nation is in 
danger the volunteer soldier is his country's best 
defender. 

The National Guard of the United States should 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 9 1 

ever be cherished in the patriotic hearts of a free 
people. Such organizations are ever an element of 
strength and safety. For the first time in our history 
and coevil with the Philippine conquest has there 
been a wholesale departure from our time-honored 
and approved system of volunteer organization. We 
denounce it as un-American, un-Democratic, and 
un-Republican, and as a subversion of the ancient 
and fixed principles of a free people. 

Private monopolies are indefensible and intoler- 
able. They destroy competition, control the price 
of all material, and of the finished product, thus 
robbing both producer and consumer. They lessen 
the employment of labor, and arbitrarily fix the 
terms and conditions thereof, and deprive individ- 
ual energy and small capital of their opportunity 
for betterment. 

They are the most efficient means yet devised 
for appropriating the fruits of industry to tfoe bene- 
fit of the few at the expense of the many, and unless 
their insatiate greed is checked all wealth will be 
aggregated in a few hands and the republic de- 
stroyed. 

The dishonest paltering with the trust evil by the 
Republican party m State and national platforms is 
conclusive proof of the truth of the charge that 
trusts are the legitimate product of Republican pol- 
icies; that they are fostered by Republican laws, 
and that they are protected by the Republican ad- 
ministration in return for campaign subscriptions 
and political support. 

We pledge the Democratic party to an unceasing 
warfare in nation, State, and city against private 
monopoly in every form. Existing laws against 
trusts must be enforced, and more stringent ones 
must be enacted providing for publicity as to the 
affairs of corporations engaged in interstate com- 



92 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

merce, and requiring all corporations to show be- 
fore doing business outside of the State of their 
origin that they have no water in their stock, and 
that they have not attempted and are not attempt- 
ing to monopolize any branch of business or the 
production of any articles of merchandise, and the 
whole constitutional power of Congress over inter- 
state commerce, the mails and all modes of inter- 
state communication shall be exercised by the 
enactment of comprehensive laws upon the subject 
of trusts. 

Tariff laws should be amended by putting the 
products of trusts upon the free list to prevent mo- 
nopoly under the plea of protection. 

The failure of the present Republican adminis- 
tration, with an absolute control over all branches 
of the national government, to enact any legislation 
designed to prevent or even curtail the absorbing 
power of trusts and illegal combinations, or to en- 
force the anti-trust laws already on the statute 
books prove the insincerity of the high-sounding 
phases of the Republican platform. 

Corporations should be protected in all their 
rights and their legitimate interests should be re- 
spected, but any attempt by corporations to inter- 
fere with the public affairs of the people or to 
control the sovereignty which creates them should 
be forbidden under such penalties as will make such 
attempts impossible. 

We condemn the Dingley tariff law as a trust- 
breeding measure, skillfully devised to give the few 
favors which they do not deserve and to place upon 
the many burdens which they should not bear. 

We favor such an enlargement of the scope of 
the interstate commerce law as will enable the com- 
mission to protect individuals and communities 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 93 

from discriminations, and the public from unjust 
and unfair transportation rates. 

We reaffirm and indorse the principles of the 
National Democratic platform adopted at Chicago 
in 1896, and we reiterate the demand of that plat- 
form for an American financial system made by the 
American people for themselves, which shall restore 
and maintain a bimetallic price level, and as part 
of such system the immediate restoration of the free 
and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the 
present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for 
the aid or consent of any other nation. 

We denounce the currency bill enacted at the last 
session of Congress as a step forward in the Re- 
publican policy which aims to discredit the sover- 
eign right of the national government to issue all 
money, whether coin or paper, and to bestow upon 
national banks the power to issue and control the 
volume of paper money for their own benefit. A 
permanent national bank currency, secured by gov- 
ernment bonds, must have a permanent debt to rest 
upon, and if the bank currency is to increase with 
population and business the debt must also increase. 
The Republican currency scheme is therefore a 
scheme for fastening upon the taxpayers a perpet- 
ual and growing debt for the benefit of the banks. 
We are opposed to this private corporation paper 
circulated as money, but without legal tender quali- 
ties, and demand the retirement of the national 
bank notes as fast as government paper or silver 
certificates can be substituted for them. 

We favor an amendment to the federal constitu- 
tion providing for the election of United States 
Senators by direct vote of the people, and we iavor 
direct legislation wherever practicable. 

We are opposed to government by injunction; 
we denounce the blacklist and favor arbitration as 



94 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

a means of settling disputes between corporations 
and their employes. 

In the interest of American labor and the uplift- 
ing of the workingmen, as the corner-stone of the 
prosperity of our country, we recommend that 
Congress create a Department of Labor, in charge 
of a Secretary, with a seat in the Cabinet, believing 
that the elevation of the American laborer will 
bring with it increased production and increased 
prosperity to our country at home and to our com- 
merce abroad. 

We are proud of the courage and fidelity of the 
American soldiers and sailors in all our wars; we 
favor liberal pensions to them and their dependents, 
and we reiterate the position taken in the Chicago 
platform in 1896 that the fact of enlistment and 
service shall be deemed conclusive evidence against 
disease and disability before enlistment. 

We favor the immediate construction, ownership 
and operation of the Nicaragua Canal by the 
United States, and we denounce the insincerity of 
the plank in the National Republican platform for 
an isthmian canal in face of the failure of the Re- 
publican majority to pass the bill pending in Con- 
gress. We condemn the Hay-Pauncefote treaty as 
a surrender of American rights and interests not to 
be tolerated by the American people. 

We denounce the failure of the Republican party 
to carry out its pledges, to grant Statehood to the 
Territories of Arizona, New Mexico, and Okla- 
homa, and we promise the people of those Terri- 
tories immediate Statehood and home rule during 
their condition as Territories, and we favor home 
rule and a Territorial form of government for 
Alaska and Porto Rico. 

We favor an intelligent system of improving the 
arid lands of the West, storing the waters for pur- 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 95 

poses of irrigation, and the holding of such lands 
for actual settlers. 

We favor the continuance and strict enforcement 
of the Chinese exclusion law and its application to 
the same classes of all Asiatic races. 

Jefferson said: "Peace, commerce and honest 
friendship with all nations; entangling alliances 
with none." We approve this wholesome doctrine 
and earnestly protest against the Republican de- 
parture which has involved us in so-called politics, 
including the diplomacy of Europe and the intrigue 
and land-grabbing of Asia, and we especially con- 
demn the ill-concealed Republican alliance with 
England which must mean discrimination against 
other friendly nations, and which has already stifled 
the nation's voice while liberty is being strangled 
in Africa. 

Believing in the principles of self-government, 
and rejecting, as did our forefathers, the aim of 
monarchy, we view with indignation the purpose 
of England to overwhelm with force the South 
African republics. Speaking, as we do, for the en-' 
tire American nation, except its Republican office- 
holders, and for all free men everywhere, we extend 
our sympathies to the heroic burghers in their une- 
qual struggle to maintain their liberty and inde- 
pendence. 

We denounce the lavish appropriations of recent 
Republican Congresses, which have kept taxes 
high, and which threaten the perpetuation of the 
oppressive war levies. 

We oppose the accumulation of a surplus to be 
squandered in such barefaced frauds upon the tax- 
payers as the shipping subsidy bill, which, under 
the false pretense of prospering American ship- 
building, would put unearned millions into the 



96 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

pockets of favorite contributors to the Republican 
campaign fund. 

We favor the reduction and speedy repeal of the 
war taxes, and a return to the time-honored Demo- 
cratic policy of strict economy in governmental 
expenditures. 

Believing that our most cherished institutions are 
in great peril, the very existence of our constitu- 
tional republic is at stake, and that the decision now 
to be rendered will determine whether or not our 
children are to enjoy those blessed privileges of free 
government which have made the United States 
great, prosperous, and honored, we earnestly ask 
for the foregoing declaration of principles the 
hearty support of the liberty-loving American peo- 
ple, regardless of previous party affiliations. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 97 

ARE NATIONAL TENDENCIES INEVITA- 
BLE? 

Trees grow, rocks lessen, nature is in a constant 
process of change and evolution. So it is in the 
political world. There is no rest. Liberty grows 
or lessens. That the political mind of nations 
moves on toward concentration of power and the 
lessening of liberty, is the history of every nation 
since Adam. The United States is on that road 
and at a more rapid pace during the McKinley ad- 
ministration than has ever been seen in any modern 
nation. 

Even yet a multitude of our protected trust "in- 
fants" are drawing their nutriment from the tariff 
bottle at the rate of anywhere from 30 to 150 per 
cent profit on their watered stocks. This, while 
labor has hard scratching to pay for its victuals and 
clothes. 

Prosperity at its best never means more to the 
laboring man than an extra steak each week, an 
extra dress for the mother, and possibly a day's 
outing for the children. Prosperity to the nation 
otherwise means only added millions to the mill- 
ionaire. 

The prosperity of the rich sometimes puts destitu- 
tion as much as twenty-four hours farther from the 
poor man's door. 

Let commerce spread. It is the millionaire's 
work. He must be protected wherever he goes by 
our armies. Let him be helped by tariffs ; the poor 
man will carry the burden till he concludes to 
throw it off. 

Meanwhile, it is known as treason if men do not 
uphold the motto of the Commercial King : "God's 
in it ! We're in it ! There's money in it !" 



98 WHAT'S THE MATTER 



BENEVOLENT DISTILLATION AS BENEV- 
OLENT ASSIMILATION. 

The story related by Harold Martin, a representa- 
tive at Manila of the Associated Press, is a story of 
shame. 

Briefly, the facts are that before the American 
army occupied Manila there were in the city three 
saloons licensed to sell strong drink. Now there 
are one hundred and seventy, besides fifty-three 
places licensed to distribute liquor in wholesale 
quantities. Ninety per cent of the patrons of these 
saloons are Americans. The Escolta, the main 
business street of the city, was formerly a respect- 
able thoroughfare; new it resembles the least 
savory sections of Clark street, Chicago, and is the 
focus point of drunken soldiery. 

One of the conspicuous virtues of the Filipino 
people is their temperance. The Spaniard, too, is 
a temperate man. Even the fierce "bino" manu- 
factured by the Filipinos is used by them in modera- 
tion. But as soon as the American began to make 
the acquaintance of "bino" he poured it into him 
in unlimited quantities. 

There is, unhappily, no good reason to suppose 
that the natural temperance of the Filipino will 
endure against the avalanche of whisky barrels that 
roll upon Luzon from arrived vessels. The miser- 
able condition of the American Indian is evidence 
to the contrary. And who cares to say that "en- 
lightenment" is a fair exchange for temperance? 
The United States is drowning the Philippines in 
blood — which may be necessary — and in whisky, 
which certainly is not. The cannon works swiftly, 
but not more surely than the distillery. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 99 

Carl Schurz says: 

"While the evil of slavery has been disposed of, 
the no less if not more serious evils of imperialism 
are impending. Not a mere commerical but a great 
moral issue is to be decided. The American people 
are to determine whether they will stand by the 
declaration of independence and the teachings of 
Washington and Lincoln, or abandon these to sup- 
port McKinley in his imperial policy of criminal 
aggression, conquest by force, perfidy to allies and 
arbitrary rule over distant populations. 

"I am confident that the people, if the issue is put 
clearly before them on its own merits, will let all 
the world know that the United States is still a 
republic and not an empire governing subject 
races." 

LINCOLN ON McKINLEY'S POLICY. 

The Republican national platform promises to 
the people of the Philippines "the largest measure 
of self-government consistent with their welfare and 
our duties." 

Abraham Lincoln disposed of this specious plea, 
used in his time, as it has been in every time, by 
the apologists of government without the consent 
of the governed. In the course of one of his 
famous series of speeches replying to Douglas the 
first Republican president said: 

"These arguments that are made, that the inferior 
race are to be treated with as much allowance as 
they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be 
done for them as their condition will allow — what 
are these arguments? They are the arguments that 
kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages 
of the world. You will find that all the arguments 
in favor of kingcraft were of this class; that they 
always bestrode the necks of the people, not that 



always 

Ltft 



1 00 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

they wanted to do it, but because the people were 
better off for being ridden. Turn it whatever way 
you will, whether it come from the mouth of a king, 
an excuse for enslaving the people of the country, 
or from the mouth of men of one race for enslaving 
the men of another, it is all the same old serpent." 
Thus clearly and emphatically has Abraham Lin- 
coln bequeathed to us his judgment on the Philip- 
pine policy of William McKinley. 

Dr. William Everett declares that the most un- 
fair peace is preferable to the justest war. He says: 

"But there is a theory, lately started, or rather 
an old one revived, that war is a good thing in 
itself, that it does a nation good to be fighting and 
killing the patriotic sons of another nation who love 
their country as we do ourselves. But there is a 
still newer theory come up about war as applied to 
ourselves. It seems that we share with a very few 
other peoples in the world a civilization so high and 
institutions so divine that it is our duty and our 
destiny to go about the globe swallowing up in- 
ferior peoples and bestowing on them, whether they 
will or not, the blessings of the American Constitu- 
tion and of American domination, and that when 
we are once started on this work of absorption they 
are rebels who don't accept the blessing. Now, 
if this precious doctrine were true, it utterly an- 
nihilates the old notion of patriotism and love of 
country. But I will not enlarge upon this delicate 
subject of modern Americanism. It is bad enough 
for the nations we threaten to absorb. It is worse 
for us, the absorbers." 

The words of Jackson, in his message vetoing 
the national bank act, may well be considered the 
creed of Democratic faith upon the subject. He 
says in this message: 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? ioi 

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful 
too often bend the acts of government to their 
own selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will 
always exist under every just government. Equal- 
ity of talent, or of education, or of wealth, cannot 
be produced by human institutions, but when the 
law undertakes to add to these natural and just 
advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, 
gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich 
richer and the potent more powerful, the humbler 
members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and 
laborers — who have neither the time nor the means 
of securing like favors for themselves, have a right 
to complain of the injustice of their government." 

In one of the speeches during the famous Lin- 
coln-Douglas debate in 1858 Lincoln discussed the 
doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and 
spoke of its framers. He said: 

"Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the 
tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they 
established these great self-evident truths, that 
when in the distant future some man, some faction, 
some interest, should set up the doctrine that none 
but rich men, none but white men, or none but 
Anglo-Saxon white men were entitled to life, lib- 
erty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity 
might look up again to the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and take courage to renew the battle 
which their fathers began, so that truth and justice 
and mercy and all the humane and Christian vir- 
tues might not be extinguished from the land; so 
that no man should hereafter dare s to limit and 
circumscribe the great principles on which the tem- 
ple of liberty was being built." 

Here was prophetic statesmanship. Lincoln 
spoke of the distant future. That was fifty-two 



102 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

years ago. The year 1900 is not a very distant 
future, counting from that point of time. 
• But the present period may have been included 
in his sublime forecast. Events have moved with 
electric rapidity which he did not contemplate. 

If now there are men, factions or interests set- 
ting up the doctrine that none but rich men, none 
but white men, none but Anglo-Saxon white men 
within our national jurisdiction are entitled to the 
rights named in the declaration of independence 
and guaranteed by the constitution, they fall within 
Lincoln's denunciation. 

Orlando J. Smith, in his "Coming Democracy," 
opens his discussion with this incontrovertible as- 
sertion: 

"The history of the national government for 
more than thirty years has been in the main a 
record of the granting of special privileges, im- 
munities, and subsidies to the strong, and against 
the interests of the mass of the people — of land 
grants and money grants to great corporations; 
of special taxes for the benefit of favored interests; 
of special deposits of the public funds in privileged 
bank, and of secret arrangements by which finan- 
cial syndicates have made unfair profits in- placing 
the issues of government bonds. 

"It is a record of favoritism, profligacy, and cor- 
ruption, which has been unequaled in any other 
land or time." 

The great French historian Guizot asked James 
Russell Lowell how long the American republic 
could be expected to endure. 

"So long," replied Lowell, "as the ideas of its 
founders continue dominant." 

This quotation from the Neue Freie Presse of 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 



103 



Vienna ought to help some to decide who think 
we can expand beyond the seas without adopting 
European methods: 

"Imperialism without militarism cannot exist for 
any length of time, and who wishes one cannot do 
without the other." 

Imperial rule by tribunals is not what Lincoln 
believed to be liberty, when he said: "No people 
deserve to be free or can long remain free who 
do not recognize the equal right of others to be 
free." 

Dr. David Starr Jordan of the Leland Stanford 
University says : 'The only race degeneration ever 
known is that which is produced by one or all of 
democracy's arch enemies, — slavery, aristocracy, 
militarism, and imperialism, — the four tyrants of 
human politics, not one of which appears without 
the others." 

On the night after Congress decided to leave the 
buying of armor plate to the Secretary of the Navy, 
the shipbuilding trust held a wine-supper celebra- 
tion at Chambers' in honor of their victory, which 
cost several thousands of dollars. 

The New York Tribune, a Republican news- 
paper, said as far back as 1878: 'The machinery 
is now furnished by which, in any emergency, the 
financial corporations of the East can act together 
at a single day's notice with such power that no 
act of Congress can overcome or resist its power." 

WILL AMUSE THE POLITICAL BOSS. 

Mark Hanna will probably be inclined to agree 
heartily with Mr. Bryan's epigrammatic assertion 



104 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

that "whenever man and the dollar come in conflict 
the Republican party stands for the dollar first; the 
Democratic party stands for the man." In all likeli- 
hood it will strike Mr. Hanna as somewhat amusing 
that Mr. Bryan should place any special emphasis 
upon such a fact. To the mind of the great trust 
politician there could be no better illustration of 
the soundness of Republican reasoning and the 
absurdity of Democratic sentimentality. — St. Louis 
Republic. 

Judge De Armond, in a noteworthy address: 
"The trend of political thought in the Republican 
party is from a republic to an empire, from sim- 
plicity to display, from economy to extravagance, 
from a sense of justice to a lust for power, from 
the delights of liberty to the glory of despotism. 
These tendencies are discordant with, and antag- 
onistic to, the ideals of the American people, a 
people jealous of .their own rights and careful to 
respect the rights of others. I believe that we 
should return at once to the simple ways of the 
republic, and walk in the paths our fathers trod. 

"This nation cannot remain one-half republic and 
one-half empire any more than it could remain one- 
half free and one-half slave. Either it will continue 
in essence, as well as in name, what our forefathers 
made it, — a republic, — or it will incarnate in es- 
sence, if not in name, the spirit of the empire our 
fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their 
sacred honor to overthrow in America. The funda- 
mental question is this: Shall the United States 
renounce those principles of free government, 
which have made and kept this nation the best and 
greatest on earth? The McKinley administration 
has committed the Republican party to the affirma- 
tive side of the question." 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 105 

Our authorities in the Philippines have been 
sending to school superintendents in this country 
circulars beginning thus : 

United States Military Government 

in the Philippines, 
Department Public Instruction. 
A Department of Public Instruction for the 
Philippines has just been established, and I write to 
ask if you can aid us in the civilization of this new 
part of our EMPIRE by sending such reports, 
bulletins, school laws, etc., now or to be issued as 
you may have for distribution. 

So it seems we already have an empire. It is not 
a possible danger of the future — it is a thing already 
established by His Majesty, William I. of Canton. 
Where there is an empire there can be no great 
incongruity in speaking of an emperor. Nor can 
citizens who wish to restore republican govern- 
ment afford to lose any time in setting about the 
work. 

The empire of wealth represented by the trusts 
is advancing along with the empire of military 
force. The two are one. Each is the negation of 
the American idea, which is that every man should 
be able to look any other man squarely in the eye 
and express his opinions as an equal. In ten years, 
at his present rate of enrichment, John D. Rocke- 
feller will be the owner of a billion dollars. He 
will be able to break any bank or business house 
in the United States. Where will be the inde- 
pendence of American manhood then? How much 
of it is left now? 

Rabbi Samuel Sale, of St. Louis, in a sermon 
said: 

"Men- have become so infatuated, so drunk with 



106 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

the transcendant importance of state and nation- 
ality as to sacrifice the ideal interests of the human 
family. This fatal misconception is the fruitful 
source of all the evils which infest Continental 
Europe, and it is even now knocking for admis- 
sion at the doors of our own country." 

Governor Charles S. Thomas, of Colorado, said: 
"It was predicted that the defeat of bimetallism 
would be followed by the retirement of all forms 
of government currency, by the dedication of the 
power of note issue to the holders of the national 
obligation,. the practical consolidation of all lines of 
transportation, and the consequent domination of 
every commercial pursuit by a score of colossal 
monopolies. These predictions have in general 
been verified. 

MONOPOLY DECLARED SUPREME. 

"Democratic defeat had scarcely been recorded 
when the march of consolidation was resumed. 
Every pursuit that engages the attention of man 
has been exploited, capitalized, and appropriated. 
The earth and the waters around about it have been 
explored for subjects of monopoly, and those who 
have thundered against unsound money have used 
the printing press and the engraver's art to turn 
out thousands of millions of fictitious values, to 
which profit the toilers and consumers pay constant 
tribute. 

"Every avenue is closed to the competitive ener- 
gies of the citizen; has been listed on the stock 
exchange, and rises and falls with the turn of the 
gambler's card. Consolidations succeed consolida- 
tions, and as they lessen in number they enlarge 
in the volume of their real and fictitious accumu- 
lations and their more despotic sway over all 
material and political interests. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 107 

"These evils, startling in their magnitude and in- 
evitable in their consequences, must either culmi- 
nate in one immense aggregation, all powerful and 
all absorbing, or be arrested and dissolved by the 
force of an aroused public opinion finding expres- 
sion at the polls in support of the nominees of this 
convention. 

"The party in power carried the last election by 
and through the support of the influences which 
we criticise. Having purchased the right to pur- 
sue their various objects, the government has been 
at all times their powerful" ally. Hence the onward 
march of organized wealth to absolute power, and 
'the exaltation of the dollar above the rights and 
the welfare of the multitude. Hence the crisis in 
our commercial affairs, whose issue, presented in 
acute form to the voters of 1900, is that of indus- 
trial despotism as against the liberty of the citizen." 



Senator Teller, of Colorado, said: "The people 
believe that gold and silver coins are the money 
of the Constitution, and that if paper money is to 
be issued, it should bear the stamp of the govern- 
ment and have back of it the wealth and power of 
the nation and not that of a private corporation. 
The people believe that the United States govern- 
ment is better able to support, regulate and control 
a paper issue than corporations, however rich the 
corporation may be, or however wise may be its 
managers." 

Republican Senator Mason, of Illinois, says that 
we should not take millions of dollars from the 
pockets of our people to build an interoceanic 
canal, which, under the rule of military necessity, 
will be controlled by the nation or allied nations 
that control the greatest naval power. Under the 



108 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

Hay-Pauncefote treaty, without the Davis amend- 
ment, we invite the nations of the world to guar- 
antee that we shall not possess the legal power to 
close it against our enemies in times of war, and 
that we will not even prepare ourselves to physically 
assist our navy in defending it, even from the as- 
saults of open enemies who may violate the terms 
of the treaty. It is incomprehensible to Senator 
Mason, as it is to every intelligent American, how 
we can afford to guarantee our enemy's war vessels 
free access through our property to assist them in 
destroying the lives and property of our citizens. 

A CHRISTIAN'S VIEW. 

The Rev. Joseph Henry Crooker, of Ann Arbor, 
Mich., formerly of Troy, has written an able paper 
on "The Menace to America," and it breathes the 
spirit of lofty patriotism and a true Christianity. 
We quote the concluding paragraphs: 

"Let us look this imperialism squarely in the 
face and realize what it means. It means the sur- 
render of American democracy. It means a 
menace to free American citizenship. It means the 
degradation of American civilization. It means the 
loss of American influence in behalf of liberty 
throughout the world. It means the severest blow 
ever struck at the cause of human freedom. It 
means that all the scattered enthusiasts for human 
progress will weep bitter tears and fold their hands 
in despair because the star of hope in America 
grows dim. It means that America desert the van- 
guard of civilization and sell her blood-bought 
birthright for a pot of gold. 

"This is imperialism — using democratic forms of 
government to rule men from without, leaving 
them destitute of citizenship as mere subjects, mak- 
ing our flag a lie to them — slavery under a new 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 109 

disguise — inhabitants only, outside the Constitu-. 
tion, with no rights that Congress need respect! If 
this continue, how long before even the democratic 
forms of government will fade away? Is America 
ready for this tremendous stride backward?" 

THE NEW DOCTRINE. 

A political doctrine is now being preached which 
furnishes the most alarming evidence of moral de- 
cay that has ever appeared in human history. Its 
baneful significance consists, not simply in its moral 
degeneracy, but in the fact that its advocates are so 
numerous and prominent. A writer in Lagos 
Weekly Record discusses this doctrine, and says: 
"A powerful nation representative of civilization, 
has the right, for the general good of humanity, to 
buy, conquer, subjugate, control and govern feeble 
and backward races and peoples, without reference 
to their wishes or opinions." This is preached from 
pulpits as the gospel of Christ. It is proclaimed 
in executive documents as ideal statesmanship. It 
is defended in legislative halls as the beginning of 
a more glorious chapter in human history. It is 
boastfully declaimed from the platform as the first 
great act in the regeneration of mankind. It is 
published in innumerable editorials, red with cries 
for blood and hot with lust for gold, as the call of 
God to the civilized nations. — Illinois State Reg- 
ister. 

BETRAYING FRIENDS. 

The whole country knew at the time that Admiral 
Dewey described and treated Aguinaldo as our ally 
against Spain and that it was universally expected, 
in consequence of this and other overt acts of 
friendship for us, the natives under their chosen 



110 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

leaders were to be aided by us to secure their in- 
dependence. 

On this understanding the whole country ap- 
plauded Admiral Dewey and approved President 
McKinley. 

Equally well known is it now that, having used 
the natives as friends and allies against Spain, the 
McKinley administration perfidiously betrayed 
them, began organizing a military campaign to take 
away their liberties and to subject their country to 
despoilment for the benefit of commercial exploiters 
who could be relied on to subscribe the funds to re- 
elect McKinley. 

Admiral Dewey's official reports show that at his 
invitation the patriot leader, Aguinaldo, was 
brought to Cavite in a vessel of our navy to confer 
with Admiral Dewey for common action against 
the Spaniards. 

The whole country was delighted over this 
fraternal spectacle and hailed through its lines the 
day when the republic of Washington and Lincoln 
would aid a republic of the Philippines in establish- 
ing its independence. - 

The dispatch of June 2.7, 1898, from Dewey to 
Secretary Long reads: "I have given him (Aguin- 
aldo) to understand that I consider the insurgents 
as friends, being opposed to a common enemy." 

The incredible audacity with which McKinley's 
apologists suppress or pervert this dispatch, Dewey 
himself evading the fact by saying he had made no 
"promise," when the dispatch itself shows precisely 
what he did do, casts shame upon the government 
of the United States. 

When General Anderson arrived at Manila bay 
with the first installment of land forces he wrote, 
July 4, 1898, to Aguinaldo: "General, I desire to 
have the most amicable relations with you and to 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? m 

have you and your people co-operate with us in 
military operations against the Spanish forces." 

That Dewey and Anderson bound us as allies to 
the Philippines to secure their freedom from Spain 
is as clear as the noonday light. That the Mc- 
Kinley administration approved the binding is 
equally certain, and that the American people in- 
dorsed the then attitude of the administration with- 
out respect to party is beyond denial. 

When Spain had quit the islands McKinley's 
speculative commercial friends saw a great chance 
to pillage and to barter in the rich country of our 
allies. With a perfidy scarcely surpassed in history 
our flag was suddenly turned into an imperial sym- 
bol. Our faithful helpers in the hour of need were 
transformed into "rebels" and our army was sent 
to hold down those brave and kindly people for 
opportunities to despoil them in our name. 

Instead of aiding them to establish their inde- 
pendence, which they had practically won before 
Dewey met Aguinaldo, we reduced them to a status 
of slavary to this republic. 

The stain on our flag in relation to the Philippines 
must be effaced, if our own liberties are to be 
respected and preserved. 

DO WE ALL HATE MONARCHY? 

It is hard for Americans to believe that their 
institutions can really be in serious danger. It 
seems to them as if republicanism were the natural 
and unchangeable condition of this continent. 
They think of monarchy as something so utterly 
foreign to our conditions that it is folly to regard 
it as a possible danger. 

A survey of history does not lend much encour- 
agement to this cheerful view. Ours is not the 



112 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

first republic that has existecKn the world, nor the 
oldest. It has lasted now for a hundred and twenty- 
four years. There was a republic in Athens, with 
some intermissions, for nine hundred years, in 
Carthage for seven hundred, in Rome for five hun- 
dred, in Florence for three hundred, in the Nether- 
lands for two hundred, and in Venice for eleven 
hundred. Where are those republics now? 

It is not flattering to our vanity, but the truth 
is that we are an upstart, parvenue nation, whose 
endurance has yet to be tested. If our government 
should go to pieces, after lasting even another cen- 
tury, it would go into history as one of the shortest- 
lived of the innumerable wrecks with which the 
annals of mankind are strewn. 

We 'may think that our brand of human nature 
is so different from human nature in general as to 
make us immune against ills that other nations 
have not been able to resist. But that is another 
delusion. The Roman of the fourth century before 
Christ was of a sterner, more unyielding repub- 
lican fiber than the American of to-day. He was 
more jealous of the slightest infringement on his 
rights. He did not treat betrayals of trust on the 
part of his servants as jokes — his sense of humor 
was rudimentary. When his resentment was 
aroused it was relentless. 

And yet this Roman's descendants became the 
abject slaves of the most degrading despotism that 
ever ground down a civilized people. 

"There was a Brutus once that would have 
brook'd the eternal devil to keep his state in Rome. 
As easily as a king." 

Within two years from the time when a de- 
scendant of that Brutus struck the last blow for 
republican liberty Antony was laying a third of the 
Roman world at the feet of a harlot queen, and 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 113 

before some of the children then living were dead 
Caligula was making his horse a consul. 

There was never a more turbulent, independent 
democracy than that of Athens. The people there 
were not dependent upon trust-owned senates. 
They got together in their own popular assemblies 
and made their own laws. They did not hesitate to 
try and execute victorious generals for slight 
breaches of customary requirements. But the time 
came when Athenian philosophers were the humble 
flatterers of Macedonian and Roman rulers, and 
when Athens degraded even her primacy in taste. 
to the point of giving her highest honors in music 
and poetry to the imperial mountebank, Nero. 

~Who would have thought, to look at the raving 
democracy of the French Terror, when it was as 
much as a man's life was worth to call a lady 
"madame" instead of "citizeness," that in five years 
France would be walking with bowed head under 
the rule of a military despot? 

Nor are we without hints nearer home of the 
possibility of radical changes in the government 
of a people. Americans were not always repub- 
licans. Two years before the adoption of the 
Declaration of Independence they were protesting 
their enthusiastic loyalty to the crown of Great 
Britain. After the revolution thousands of the fore- 
most inhabitants of the colonies, unable to reconcile 
themselves to a republican government, emigrated 
to Canada, where their descendants are now the 
most extreme supporters of monarchical rule. 

American women, after a long and honorable ap- 
prenticeship at the washtub, have availed them- 
selves of the first smiles of fortune to hold and kiss 
the hand of royalty. Foreign noblemen find their 
titles readily transmutable into American cash. 
Americans like William Waldorf Astor and Bradley 



Il 4 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

Martin have exchanged their republican birthright 
for the right to call themselves subjects of the Eng- 
lish queen. Trusts that are working for the re- 
election of William McKinley would just as 
cheerfully work for the coronation of an emperor 
if they thought that step would promote their in- 
terests. 

If a visitor from Mars had been permitted to see 
Rome at the beginning of the first Punic war and 
then had been able to see America to-day, which 
country would he have considered more likely to 
hold on to its republican institutions? 

The republics of the past have fallen from various 
causes, but one rule we believe to have been in- 
variable : 

NO REPUBLIC HAS EVER GOVERNED 
SUBJECT PROVINCES AND PRESERVED 
ITS OWN FREEDOM. 

Empire abroad has ended in empire or collapse at 
home. 

But do we believe that William McKinley, if re- 
elected, will be formally crowned as the Emperor 
William the first? Certainly not. This is not 
usually carried through in that way. Despotism 
is the same, but the type of despot changes. When 
the Roman republic was ripe for its fall the people 
did not crown a king. First one general and then 
another came into power through the form of law. 
After the excesses of Marius and Sulla there was 
a temporary revival of constitutional government 
under Cicero. Then the same conferred the powers 
of a number of different officials upon Caesar — 
so many that he was in fact a monarch, although 
in name only the head of a republic. Then, after 
a period of anarchy, this concentration of power in 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 115 

the hands of one man was systematized and made 
permanent. Rome became in fact a despotism, but 
it was long before it ceased to be nominally a re- 
public, and the head of its government was never 
king, but always. "imperator-general." 

Nor did Florence in losing its liberty become at 
once a monarchy in name. The Medici at first 
were simply commercial bosses— an infinitely 
superior grade of Mark Hannas. 

In this country we can already see the beginning 
of this descent in the abdication of power by our 
legislative bodies. It is all "trust the President." 

Don't regulate the government of the Philippines 
by law — leave it to the President. 

Don't interfere with Cuba — let the President at- 
tend to it. 

Don't let the Porto Ricans choose their own 
rulers — let the President appoint them. 

Don't say how the $50,000,000 national defense 
fund is to be spent — give the President entire dis- 
cretion. 

Don't fix a price for armor plate — leave it to the 
President's Secretary of the Navy. 

Don't lay down a policy in China — let the Presi- 
dent decide what our relations shall be with a third 
of the human race, and use the army and navy to 
enforce his policy. 

If this keeps on much longer it will make no 
particular difference whether we have the name of 
emperor or not. We shall have the fact of empire. 
— From the Chicago American. 

The following platform was adopted by the Anti- 
Imperialist League: 

"We hold that the policy known as imperialism 
is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, 
an evil 'from which it has been our glory to be free. 



Il6 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

We regret that it has become necessary in the land 
of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, 
of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty 
; and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that 
governments derive their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed. We insist that the sub- 
jugation of any people is 'criminal aggression' and 
open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our 
government. 

"We earnestly condemn the policy of the present 
national administration in the Philippines. It seeks 
to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. 
We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, 
whose bravery deserves admiration even in an un- 
just war. We denounce the slaughter of the 
Filipinos as a needless horror. W'e protest against 
the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish 
methods. 

"We demand the immediate cessation of the war 
against liberty begun by Spain and continued by 
us. We urge that Congress be promptly convened 
to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to concede 
to them the independence for which they have so 
long fought and which of right is theirs. 

"The United States have always protested 
against the doctrine of international law which per- 
mits the subjugation of the weak by the strong. 
A self-governing state cannot accept sovereignty 
over an unwilling people. The United States can- 
not act upon the ancient heresy that might makes 
right. 

"Imperialists assume that with the destruction by 
American hands of self-government in the Philip- 
pines all opposition here will cease. This is a griev- 
ous error. Much as we abhor the war of 'criminal 
aggression' in the Philippines, greatly as we regret 
that the blood of the Filipinos is on American 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 117 

hands, we more deeply resent the betrayal of Amer- 
ican institutions at home. The real firing- line is 
not in the suburbs of Manila. The foe is of our 
own household. The attempt of 1861 was to divide 
the country. That of 1899 is to destroy its funda- 
mental principles and noblest ideals. 

"Whether the ruthless slaughter of the Filipinos 
shall end next month or next year is but an incident 
in a contest that must go on until the Declaration 
of Independence and the Constitution of the United 
States are rescued from the hands of their be- 
trayers. Those who dispute about standards of 
value while the foundation of the republic is under- 
mined will be listened to as little as those who 
would wrangle about the small economies of the 
household while the house is on fire. The training 
of a great people for a century, the aspiration for 
liberty of a vast immigration who have made their 
homes here, are forces that will hurl aside those 
who in the delirium of^ conquest seek to destroy 
the character of our institutions. 

"We deny that the obligation of all citizens to 
support their government in times of grave national 
peril applies to the present situation. If an admin- 
istration may with impunity ignore the issues upon 
which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition 
of war anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch 
the civil service for spoils to promote the adven- 
ture, organize a truth-spreading censorship and 
demand of all citizens a suspension of judgment 
and their unanimous support while it chooses to 
continue the fighting, representative government 
itself is imperiled. 

"We propose to contribute to- the defeat of any 
person or party that stands for the forcible subjuga- 
tion of any people. We shall oppose for re-election 
all who in the White House or in Congress betray 



Il8 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

American liberty in pursuit of un-American ends. 
We still hope that both of our great political par- 
ties will support and defend the Declaration of In- 
dependence in the closing campaign of the century. 

"We hold with Abraham Lincoln that no man is 
good enough to govern another man without that 
other's consent. When the white man governs 
himself, that is self-government, but when he 
governs himself and also governs another man, that 
is more than self-government — that is despotism. 
Our reliance is in love of liberty, which God has 
planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which 
prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands. 
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not 
for themselves, and under a just God cannot long 
retain it. 

"We cordially invite the co-operation of all men 
and women who remain loyal to the Declaration of 
Independence and the Constitution of the United 
States." 

COSTLY BUSINESS EXPANSION. 

During the fiscal year just closed Manila im- 
ported merchandise to the amount of $17,500,000. 
The United States furnished goods amounting to 
$1,350,364. In order to secure a market for $1,- 
350,364 worth of American goods we have expend- 
ed upward of $150,000,000, sacrificed more than 
2,000 American lives, violated the constitution of 
the United States, deserted the principles of the 
declaration of independence, trebled the size of our 
standing army, ruined the health of upward of 5,000 
American soldiers and entangled ourselves in the 
politics of Europe. — Omaha World Herald. 

J. Alejandrino and Andres Garchitorena, two* 
spokesmen for Aguinaldo and later generals under 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 119 

him, were invited to go aboard the Olympia in the 
bay of Hongkong. 

The following interview in French took place 
through the Flag Lieutenant, Mr. Brumby, acting 
as interpreter : 

"Filipino : 'Admiral, it having come to oui\ 
knowledge that a war between your country and 
Spain is imminent, we, who have fought the latter 
for our independence, are willing, in obedience to 
the desires manifested by you to General Aguinaldo 
through Mr. Wood, to take part in the war as allies 
of America, so long as it be carried on with the 
object of freeing from the yoke of Spain her colo- 
nies, giving them their independence/ 

PROMISES INDEPENDENCE AND 
FREEDOM. 

"Admiral Dewey : The American people, cham- 
pions of liberty, will undertake this war with the 
humanitarian object of freeing from the Spanish 
yoke the peoples under it, and will give you inde- 
pendence and freedom, as we have proclaimed to 
the world at large.' 

"Filipino : 'We are grateful for this generous 
manifestation of the great American people, and, 
being made through an Admiral of their navy, we 
value it more than a written contract, and thereupon 
place ourselves at your entire disposal/ 

"Admiral Dewey : 'I place at your disposal the 
ships of my fleet for the conveyance of both the 
Filipino leaders and the arms you may get. More- 
over, I think my government is willing to supply 
you with arms and ammunition/ 

"Filipino : 'We are thankful to you for this new 
generosity of the American people, and you may 
be sure that we are ready to fight at your side for 
the independence of the Philippines, even without 



120 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

arms, as we have done during the recent revolution.' 
"Admiral Dewey : 'America is rich in every re- 
spect; she has territories sparsely inhabited. Be- 
sides, our constitution prevents territorial expan- 
sion" outside of America; therefore the Filipinos 
may be sure of their independence, and not a bit of 
their land shall be taken from them.' ,: 

THE FILIPINOS. 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a great-grandson of 
the illustrious dramatist whose name he bears, an 
English barrister and man of means, made an ex- 
haustive study among the Filipinos of their rights 
and wrongs under the Americans. He went there, 
he says, "an enthusiastic advocate of America's 
humane policy." He returns from there to write 
a book, "The Filipino Martyrs," in-which he proves 
that he has lost none of his faith in the American 
people, but views with' absolute abhorrence the pres- 
ent administration. His book is an appeal to the 
common man, the final arbiter, from the deeds to 
which the men about McKinley have pledged the 
American name in the islands of the sea. 

Mr. Sheridan went to Manila in the United States 
dispatch boat Zafiro, through the courtesy of Con- 
sul-General Rounsevelle Wildman. At that time, as 
he avers; "I believed the United States had acquired 
the Philippine Islands, not only by right of con- 
quest, but by right of purchase, and I admired the 
generous gift of twenty million dollars made to con- 
quered and bankrupt Spain. But, after a short time 
in Manila, I discovered that the Filipinos had been 
grossly misrepresented. I had been frequently told 
the Filipinos were a turbulent race of semi-bar- 
barians, instinctively savage, and without the small- 
est desire to become civilized or to recognize the 
necessity either for religion or refinement. I found 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 121 

men of refinement and cultivation ; individuals of 
intellect and education, who objected to the admin- 
istration's policy of extermination and to the arro- 
gance of General Otis. 

As a conscientious observer, without prejudice, 
he says : "It is time the American people, and not 
the government, took in hand this question, and in- 
sisted upon the publication of all letters and cables 
sent to the Philippines, and the replies received at 
Washington — then, and then only, will the Ameri- 
can people be the true arbitrators of a cause which 
threatens to obliterate some of the most illustrious 
pages in American history." 

CHRISTIAN REBELS AND MOHAMMEDAN 
BROTHERS. , 

It is worthy of note that the Christians in the 
Philippines are not permitted to govern themselves, 
or to have any voice in their own affairs by order of 
McKinley, while the Mohammedans have only had 
their independence of all American law assured 
them, but are being paid from the United States 
treasury in the bargain. 

AGUINALDO PROMISED FREEDOM. 

"What will be the reward of our people?" asked 
the two Filipino commanders when the American 
commander offered them all the arms and ammuni- 
tion they required to fight with, if they would help 
the United States against Spain. 

"I have no authority," Dewey replied, "but there 
is no doubt if you co-operate with us and assist us 
by fighting the common enemy that you will be 
granted your freedom the same as the Cubans will 
be" 

Mr. Sheridan met Mr. Pratt in Singapore last 
April, and Mr. Pratt said to him : 



122 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

"I did not send Aguinaldo to Dewey until he 
sent word to me that he wanted Aguinaldo to come. 
I was in no sense a party to any arrangements re- 
puted to have been made between Aguinaldo and 
the American government or its representatives, 
and on the departure of Aguinaldo for Hongkong 
I duly notified my government of the fact." 

DEWEY AUTHORIZED CONFERENCE. 

"Commodore Dewey authorized a conference on 
April 25 (1898) with Aguinaldo and Isadore Santos, 
representing the Spanish Filipinos and Spanish half- 
breeds, and concluded an agreement in the following 
clauses : 

"(1) The independence of the Philippines shall be 
proclaimed. 

"(2) There shall be established a centralized re- 
public, with a government whose members are to 
be provisionally appointed by Don Emilio Agui- 
naldo. 

"(3) This government is to recognize a temporary 
intervention by American and European commis- 
sioners to be appointed by Commodore Dewey. 

"(4) The American protectorate is to be estab- 
lished under the same terms and conditions as it is 
accepted in Cuba. 

"(5) The ports of the Philippines will be open to 
the commerce of the whole world. 

"(6) Measures will be taken regarding Chinese 
immigration in order that it shall not injure native 
labor. 

"(7) The administration of justice will be re- 
formed and, pending these reforms, it will be in the 
hands of competent European judges. 

"(8) Liberty of the press and of association will 
be proclaimed. 

"(9) The same applies to religious freedom. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 123 

"(10) The. working of the mineral resources of the 
archipelago will be regulated. 

"(11) To facilitate the development of public 
wealth, new roads will be opened and the construc- 
tion of railways encouraged. 

"(12) The impediments now placed to the forma- 
tion of industrial enterprises and the taxes imposed 
upon foreign capital will be removed. 

"(13) The new government undertakes the duty 
of maintaining order and preventing any reprisals." 

GOVERNMENT NEVER IN IGNORANCE. 

On June 14, 1898, Secretary Long telegraphed 
to Dewey in these words, as Mr. Sheridan obtained 
them from the official records : 

"Report fully any conferences, relations or co- 
operations, military or otherwise, which you have 
had with Aguinaldo, and keep department informed 
in that respect." 

To this Dewey replied on June 27, 1898, as fol- 
lows : 

''Receipt of telegrams of June 11 acknowledged. 
Aguinaldo, insurgent leader, with thirteen of his 
staff, arrived May 19 by permission. He estab- 
lished himself at Cavite outside arsenal, under pro- 
tection of our guns, and organized his army. I have 
had several conferences with him, generally of a 
personal nature. Consistently, I have refrained 
from assisting him in any way with the force under 
my command, and on several occasions I have de- 
clined requests that I should do so, telling him the 
squadron could not act until the arrival of the 
United States troops. At the same time I consider 
insurgents as friends, being opposed to a common 
enemy. He has gone to attend the meeting of in- 
surgent leaders for the purpose of forming a civil 



124 



WHAT'S THE MATTER 



government. Aguinaldo has acted independently 
of the squadron, but has kept me advised of his 
progress, which has been wonderful. I have al- 
lowed him to pass, by water, recruits, arms, ammu- 
nition from the arsenal as he needed. Have advised 
him frequently to conduct the war humanely, which 
he has done invariably. My relations with him are 
cordial, but I am not in his confidence. The United 
States have not been bound in any way to assist in- 
surgents by any act or promises, and he is not, to 
my knowledge, committed to assist us. I believe 
he expects to capture Manila without any assist- 
ance, but doubt ability, they not having many guns. 
In my opinion these people are far superior in their 
intelligence and more capable of self-government 
than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with 
both races." 

Even after the fall of Manila, General Merritt is- 
sued a proclamation, on Aug. 14, 1898, in which he 
said: 

"The commander of the United States forces now 
in possession has instructions from his government 
to assure the people of the Philippines that he has 
not come to wage war upon them, but to protect 
them in their homes, in their employments, and in 
their personal and religious rights." 

With Otis in command there began an excru- 
ciating series of blunders, as Mr. Sheridan sets 
them forth. The armies of the Filipinos were tired 
of war and anxious to disband. They saw with 
wonder the great numbers of soldiers the United 
States continued to pour into the port of Manila, 
after the fighting was all done and the terms of 
peace actually under discussion. There was a feel- 
ing of the utmost friendliness toward the Americans 
who had just freed the Filipino people from a long 
and almost hopeless servitude. 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 125 

ONLY ASKED FOR RECOGNITION. 

'They merely desired, and properly so," as Mr. 
Sheridan says, "some recognition and explanation 
as to the future policy of the American government, 
some grateful courtesy at the hands of those whom 
they had assisted in conquering the enemy." 

So long as Admiral Dewey was on the ground 
and in authority the attitude of the American forces 
was one of conciliation. But before he sailed away 
General Otis was given a free hand, regardless of 
his advice. No Filipino attaches any blame to 
Dewey for th-e subsequent occurrences, and all view 
him as having done well under the exceedingly dif- 
ficult circumstances raised by the vacillating and 
contradictory attitude of McKinley, Hanna and the 
rest of the Washington government. 

WAITED IN VAIN FOR PROMISE. 

So the Filipino army lay, day after day, month 
after month, waiting for some word from Washing- 
ton that would justify it in laying down its arms. 
Nothing came. McKinley and his advisers could 
say nothing that would show the men and women 
of the islands what the intention of America might 
be. Relations grew strained under the continued 
attacks of a semi-official nature that Otis and Mc- 
Kinley permitted to appear in the Manila press. 

NATIVES ORDERED OUT. 

Nor did this answer. A second order was issued 
by Otis, almost before the natives were settled, or- 
dering them to move again. Aguinaldo sent a re- 
spectful letter to Otis, complaining that Otis could 
not possibly understand what suffering he was in- 
flicting upon his patient people. No reply was 
sent. - But the army withdrew the second time. 



126 WHAT'S THE MATTER 

Soon after the launches of the Filipinos, which 
had been permitted to ply in the bay, were seized 
and the officers whom Aguinaldo sent to learn the 
reason treated with indignity. Thereafter no Amer- 
ican soldier, though there had been a genera] order 
from the beginning to salute all Filipino officers in 
passing, was in any way allowed to recognize the 
existence of a Filipino. 

OTIS SCORNED ADVICE. 

Otis, though a new comer, scorned them all, and 
the author is forced to remark that "had Gen- 
eral Otis consulted Mr. Higgins, or men like him, 
the American commander would have acquired 
much useful information, with the result that there 
might have been long since a peaceful termination 
to these unwarrantable hostilities. 

The fact, sufficiently notorious in America in spite 
of the censorship, that the volunteers refused to 
serve longer under such a general, regarding him 
as an exemplar of "blundering despotism and in- 
competence," brings out this observation: 

"Yet the American government, though in pos- 
session of facts which would cause the withdrawal 
of any general in the world so placed, declined from 
time to time to recall him. It allowed him until 
very recently to continue to misgovern and to mis- 
manage its affairs in the Philippines, to the detri- 
ment of American interests and to the disgrace 
of the American people." 

PROCLAMATION THE LAST STRAW. 

But they did not have to wait so long. Before 
the treaty had been ratified by the Senate and made 
a part of the law of the land, McKinley issued his 
famous proclamation of "benevolent assimilation" 
on January 4, 1899. This, it will be recalled, was 



WITH THE UNITED STATES? 127 

of so violent and compromising a nature that it 
gagged even Otis, who modified it to a considerable 
extent. But even in its softened form it contained 
the phrase, "There will be sedulously maintained 
the strong arm of authority to repress disturbance 
and to overcome all obstacles ;" while the only 
promise it contained was the distant "bestowal of 
increased powers" until the Filipinos had "a gov- 
ernment as free and independent as is enjoyed by 
the most favored provinces of the world." "Prov- 
inces" showed that there was nothing to be ex- 
pected, and "the strong arm" was taken by every 
Filipino to mean a declaration of war and nothing 
else. 

THOUGHT IT DECLARED WAR. 

This was the beginning of the end. The next 
day, the very next morning, Manila was placarded 
with a counter proclamation by Aguinaldo, in which 
the McKinley document was expressly recognized 
as a declaration of war against the aspirations of the 
Filipino people for a measure of self-government, 
however small, and the outbreak of open hostilities 
was inevitable and close at hand. 

Therefore all the suffering and misery, all the 
death and insanity, all the demoralization which 
tropical life and life in camps brings to youth, all 
these things and more are on the heads of those 
who made them possible, on the stubborn and in- 
vincibly ignorant Otis and his vacillating and in- 
efficient chiefs. 

NO SYMPATHY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. 

Mr. -Sheridan remained in Manila long enough 
to meet the first batch of commissioners which 
McKinley sent out to lock the stable after he had 
let the horse run away. He found Denby without 



1800 



128 THE UNITED STATES. 

the "least sympathy with human rights in any 
form." He found Worcester "quite unacquainted 
with the new Filipino race which had arisen during 
the last twenty years" and convinced that they were 
an "uncivilized people." Schurman was both able 
and honest, but hopelessly alone. Dewey had stated 
his own requirements in the premises when he said : 

"I consider it absolutely necessary that a first- 
class statesman be sent to Manila to investigate the 
situation thoroughly." 

But he said that in December, 1898, before Mc- 
Kinley had begun to talk about "provinces" and 
"the strong arm," or to proclaim the monarchical 
doctrine that he and Congress were so superior 
to the constitution that they could own foreign de- 
pendencies containing Mohammedan polygamy, 
chattel slavery, moral debauchery and all kinds of 
caste relations and orders from servile eunuch to 
autocratic sovereign, and govern them, under the 
Stars and Stripes without any reference to the 
organic law upon which this government was 
founded. 

IF THE PEOPLE ARE DEAD IN THE 
CAUSE OF LIBERTY, THE PRESI- 
DENTIAL EMPIRE IS 
INEVITABLE. 



WHAT'S -THE •MATTER 



...WITH THE... 



UNITED • STATES 

? 



3INDERY 
1903 



